Episode 226 - Inferno The Musical (S2E12 Secrets)
We all remember that great teacher from high school who would go the extra mile for all of their students. This episode of SVU presupposes that that exemplary educator is most likely a gang-bang addicted sex-club enthusiast on the side. This wild ride takes us from the heights of the pre-2.0 internet to the depths of "Dante's Inferno" and to every lurid second unit photo shoot in between. We need to give special mention to both art department who spared no depravities in their work for this episode, and for the outstanding quality of the background actors, who give (too much?) life to their wordless roles.
Episode 217: Always Be Brewing (S2E17 Folly)
This week's installment really takes the Munchie Boys on a wild ride, starting with a working boy stumble-crashing a wedding in his boxers, dipping its toes in the water with Finnish furniture design and Altoona-style pizza, and finishing with a perp stroking Elliot's hand asking if he's going to protect them. Along the way, we take a voyage through high-end gigolo culture, the world of political donors and ambassadorial appointments, and one of the most extreme instances of folie à deux imaginable for a married couple. This is a classic early season journey where we're a pinball flicked between weird plot points in a way that's truly refreshing after spending so much time in late-season SVU.
Episode 214: They Only Serve Beef Grogan-off (S11E15 Confidential)
The Randomizer finally gifted the Munchies with a Season 11 Stablersode, and in classic fashion, our beloved, bechiseled-butt-cheeks boy takes an already convoluted mess of a case, and thoroughly Fs it in the B. Here we see a karate-loving ponzi schemer get off on rubbing out his accountants whenever the market takes a downturn, before passing the episode's baton to his attorney who might have protected her client's confidentiality but certainly did not protect his person.
Episode 210: Watch the Voltage, Babe (S7E2 Design)
After nearly four months, the Randomizer finally rolled a Neal Baer-era SVU for us to watch, and despite a slow beginning, "Design" really delivers the wild stuff we love. This episode was supposed to star disgraced former President Donald J Trump as a hot piece of genetic material who's disrupting the mortuary sciences industry. Instead it features a laundry list of famous faces with strange backstories. What kind of madness allows the Munchie Boys to say "electroejaculation" 21 times in a single episode? Listen and find out. We also learn some terrible news about Odafin Tutuola's taste in music. Somehow, this is a crossover episode that terminates in Law & Order "Flaw" (S16E2).
Episode 195: He Was Killed by Assassins, Ninja Assassins (S3E16 Popular)
If Popular is any indication, being a kid actor on SVU in the early days was not for the faint of heart. They’ll either have you playing a scumbag turning out your girlfriend for whichever old reason, or they’ll have you perping on your best friend’s girl who isn’t into you but who he instructed to bone you anyway despite the fact that you can’t stand him, or they’ll have you get turned out, contract gonorrhea, have your parents find out you’ve become ensnared in a beej-for-beer barter middle-school party scene, and have everyone say you are not attractive. No complexes developed here…
Episode 194: Pandora's Box Has Been Opened and Kokomo Has Been Unleashed (S9E4 Savant)
This week, we meet an Irish-American father-of-daughters who is even angrier than our own, beloved, Stabler. However, instead of 'swinging from a pole,' said daughter is possessed of superhuman hearing and a charming inability to be "normal" due to her Williams Syndrome. Thankfully, our super daughter is able to help the SVUs get to the bottom of just how many dudes were in mom's bedroom the night she was attacked, and exactly which noises they were loudly producing.
Episode 193: She Really Wants to Get Back to the Pretty Boy Perp with the Peen Prob that Elliot’s Probing (S8E19 Florida)
In this week's episode Florida, the Munchie Boys are dragged into the Simon Marsden Saga, leaving them wishing they'd had been sent to Florida on a pointless side mission like Dean Porter was in this one. Alas, they're fully immersed in this Liv-servicing backstory, one which errs into some pretty painful narrative territory and squanders a golden opportunity to dive into what should be rich and interesting waters. There's a lot of next-level bad policework being done, and we're subjected to Olivia Benson channeling the worst impulses of Elliot Stabler, Amanda Rollins, and Nick Amaro in an episode in which nearly every action she takes is anathema to the character we’ve all known for 25 years.
Episode 191: I Mean We Want His Joint to Have Been on Fire (S2E1 Wrong Is Right)
The first installment of the Neal Baer era is a doozy, pitting our intrepid SVUs against the defense-industrial complex. In a momentary distraction from family time, which became all too common during his time on the Unit, Elliot Stabler is pulled away from his family--in this case Maureen, a daughter who follows instructions POORLY--for a case in which he literally cannot help but become embroiled. Sure, jurisdiction and the vic's very speculative status as a special victim as it burned to a crisp are real-life hurdles that are completely ignored as Stabler and the Unit dig into the vic's eventually uncovered extremely terrible past.
Along the way, we find out that the US government paved the way for an especially odious pedo to victimize innocent youths without any roadblocks or pushback. We also get a Stabler traumatized for the first time and the introduction of one of the most beloved characters in the entire L&O universe. Fun is had amidst the tragic but fairly realistic world in which our victims live.
Episode 183: It Doesn’t Tickle My Twasn’t (S6E23 Goliath)
NYPD officers who've been serving in Afghanistan are getting pretty violent, domestically, and the Unit has to race against a *gasp* journalist to get to the bottom of what's going on in this week's Ripped from the Headlines edition of SVU. The Army are very bad, doctors are huge cowards, and journalists may or may not be bottom feeders in this screed where no cows are sacred and no army wife is safe.
Episode 181: I Think Dilbert’s the Juiciest Role (S4E8 Waste)
It wouldn't be a peak-era SVU episode if we weren't treated to an investigative red herring that eats up an entire act of television only to be discarded unceremoniously, forever forgotten and treated as though it never have happened. That misdirect usually isn't a NINE MINUTE NECROPHILIA KICK that plays as exploitative and shocking, leaving the audience's collective jaws on the floor, all while having the perp in question just brush up against the periphery of the Unit's case. It's a real shocker, and "Waste" provides it. It also has nothing to do with the pregnant woman in a permanent vegetative state who was knocked up while in the hospital.
Episode 180: New York City Sidewalk Juice (S12E19 Bombshell)
***MUNCHIES' CHOICE***
When an older gentleman with a knife sticking out of his junk slumps against a Lexus belonging to the worst parker in Lower Manhattan, the unit embarks on an investigation which leads them into a delightfully well-run swingers club. Liv and Stabler go, possibly, a little too undercover and find themselves at the mercy of a legion of pawing hedonists. This being a Season Twelver, the plot careens wildly from red herring to red herring, but it's fun and saucy throughout. Thanks to our splendid Munchies for picking this as our Munchies' Choice episode this week!
Episode 175: That Is Not Safe Candling (S3E10 Ridicule)
For the second time, the Munchie Boys go back to the well from the earliest episodes of the podcast to reevaluate (with the benefit of having now seen and rated more than 170 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) the truly brainmelting Season 3 banger, Ridicule, which gives us Casey Novak's very disturbing origin story before she changed her name from Amelia Chase. The world of SVU is upside-down in this one as women sexually assault men, tumescence exams are discussed, and autoerotic asphyxiation is de rigueur. And… Casey Novak—er, “Amelia Chase” is involved in almost all of that.
Episode 174: If Anyone Knows What Leather Will Do To A DNA Sample, It’s O’Halloran (S8E17)
A dead, naked male prostitute is found in a cemetery which leads SVU from hell house to Long Island proto-mega church to the responsible brother from Wings to his accountant over the course of the investigation. Hilarity ensues assuredly.
Episode 160: The Hardest Core Of Hardcore BDSM Benslers (S10E22 Zebras)
The Munchies thought they were sending us down a dark and unprofessional path when they selected this haired-brained thriller of an SVU episode which begins with a dead Topekan tourist in Central Park, traverses a Lady From Shanghai-esque fun-house sequence in Coney Island, and tiptoes around all manner of Dale Stuckey-related content on its way to unceremoniously killing off one of Munch My Benson's favorite characters as a prelude to some kinky Liv and Elliot fan service. Little did they know, that we are just messed up enough to enjoy this wild, and very much not SVU, romp. Also, Adam suffers some very real life consequences from trying to record this episode in his bedroom.
Episode 158: Her Screams of Agony Are One of the High Points of the Episode, Emotionally (S5E3 Mother)
Two dipshit wannabe writers on an uptown depravity tour lead the detectives at SVU into a truly outlandish world populated by avenging sister-moms and serial-rapists-made-good who are pushed back into serial raping by the heavy-handed approach of Stabler & Co. Along the way we learn about cleaning fish, proper wine breathing etiquette, and whether or not Ricardo from the Java Barn is the right guy to ask for illicit hard drugs. This episode revels in the early season insanity. Does it make sense? Does it have to?
Episode 156: There's Bear Goatse, and She Goes All the Way Up (S4E10 Resilience)
When television's Harry Bosch (technically Titus Welliver) started firing blanks a few years ago, the strangest thing happened. Instead of happily raising the large brood of children he already had, he chose to pimp out first his wife, then his nanny, and finally his own daughter in a bizarre cult-like scheme to rear as many children as possible. Obviously, things went off the rails, or in the case of his daughter, nearly on to them when she attempts to throw herself in front of the N train starting this week's SVU in motion. Along the way Adam tells you all about applying for pre-K in New York, and we wonder whether or not NYPD could conceivably plant evidence beneath two feet of concrete under your townhouse.
Episode 153: Make ‘Em Space Communists That Are Waiting for Sentient Dolphins to Come Impregnate Us (S4E24 Perfect)
Another SVU, another bizarre cult. This time around, a certifiable quack of the cloning-will-save-humankind-from-the-depleting-ozone-layer variety has an entire organization hornswoggling teen girls with low self-esteem into becoming his own personal baby factories. Don't worry, it's not just non-sexual sex cult action we're dealing with this time around. No, we've got police brandishing their weapons and running hilariously, accents that spin you around, and surprising restraint from a cult leader who seems much more interested in playing God than hide the salami. Of course, talk of claims of human cloning took Adam down a strange rabbit hole into the Raëlians, and there are some wildly unexpected revelations with regards to this week’s guest stars, so there’s a ton of munchy weirdness afoot this week.
Alt episode title this week? Her Mouth Is a Melting Pot.
Episode 152: I Gave Your Mom a Guardian Ad Litem End-Around (S5E19 Sick)
In an episode Adam already covered on his guestisode of the These Are Their Stories Pod, we watched a preposterous reimagining of the various Michael Jackson sexual abuse allegations in which an uber-wealthy toy mogul lures children into his low-rent pirate-themed sex lair to dress them up in precious pajamas and have his way with them. Was it fun? Yes, absolutely. Did it feature enough lemur? Sadly, no.
Episode 151: This Is Basically SVU’s Rashomon (S9E3 Impulsive)
This installment of SVU pits very recognizable teacher against an also recognizable student in a he-said-she-gonorrhea'd-me/she-said-he-raped-me exercise in who can we believe for the Unit and the audience. Sure, the teacher is Sabrina/Clarissa, but if we know anything about this show, it's hard to believe the potentially stuntcasted. And, yeah, the kid is basically known for playing quiet lunatics, but they can't both have done it, right? This one's fun AND strains credulity in all the best ways.
Episode 148: The Post-Micturition Dribble (S10E15 Lead)
What happens when a trusted pediatrician is found to have extra-medically milked many young boys urethras over the years? Well in SVU, he is brutally beaten to death by one of his former victims who himself was doubly victimized as his Pica led him to eat the lead paint off of cheap toy cars which permanently stunted his development and planted the seeds of his rage. Come for Alexandra Cabot's jaw dropping Season 10 return, stay for Kim Greylek's unceremonious act 2 poochie'ing, and go home with a delightfully detailed breakdown of what exactly blood alcohol content means and whether or not the arrogant rich guy could have blown a 2.2 and kept driving.