The discovery of a raped and battered woman in a rowboat next to the Mayor's mansion leads SVU on a wild adventure through the strange and spicy world of world music festival groupies. We meet bawdy bouzouki players, peek behind the curtains of a legendary Midtown motor lodge, contemplate the economics of the Canadian podcast ecosystem, and learn, conclusively, that Warren Leight's New York is no place for prairie provincers.

The first episode back from lockdown and the tumultuous summer of 2020 has our SVUs grappling with their own existence. Can they reckon with the role they've played in the realm of copaganda? Can they talk about systemic racism without doing the racism themselves? Can they figure out how to wear masks in the throes of the pandemic? These are questions that the Munchie Boys are forced to answer in this navel-gazing episode of SVU.

The grand return of Elliot Stabler (and family) to SVU would probably hit harder if we were watching these eps in order one at a time. That, however, is not how we do things at Munch My Benson. Instead, we are treated to an investigation that is way, WAY outside the Special Victims Unit's purview, and which won't pay off in an episode of SVU (if it ever does). Still, it's fun to see how Dickie Stabler has grown up and to indulge in the wildest fan service fantasies that were surely swirling when this one first dropped.

If there's one thing that SVU does consistently, it's dealing with trans issues indelicately, and this week's installment--the first under Rick Eid's guidance--is no exception. Season 18's Broken Rhymes has the unit dealing with trans bathroom usage in a way that isn't even remotely close to the law being discussed. Of course, this one also sets our trans victim--who is on life support by the cold open and not given much in the way of agency or depth--against the world of hip-hop, bringing in Wyclef Jean to, well, not do much. This wouldn't be a trans-focused SVU ep without homophobic and transphobic epithets being slung or the paint-by-numbers conversation amongst the members of the unit explaining trans people to Middle America, so steel yourself for that.

For our 200th episode, the Munchies let the sword of Damo-Kim drop. That's right folks, this week we watched the episode that introduced the most dysfunctional sibling in the entire SVU universe, Kim Rollins. We are also treated to a "never let your teen daughters go to New York" A-plot, which postulates that there are hordes of child pornographers hanging out in hotel lobbies across the city, ready to pounce on unsuspecting teens who are sick of museums. This was much more fun than expected, enjoy!

After three straight episodes spent in Season 24, the Munchie Boys get weird with the prehistoric SECOND EPISODE of Law & Order: Sex Crimes--er, Special Victims Unit. Adhering to the old TV trope that the second episode is basically a second pass at a pilot, this one hits a lot of the same beats that we saw all the way back in Episode 1. Just like the rest of the first season, the salacious and disgusting is cranked up, the darkness is unavoidable, and the Stabler family is prominently featured, though this one prominently features Elliot and Kathy in their underwear, selling sex marital-style.

Alt-title: Dickie’s Turtle Getting Cannibal Holocausted.

We're back with the third and final installment of the Season 24 BX9/Oscar Papa epic which began with Benson nearly getting hacked to death on the street outside her apartment. This time we get a lovely little diversion in the form of a Fin and Terry Bruno side quest in the Bronx. Before SVU can finally turn the screws on super criminal Oscar Papa, we witness the shocking end of a recurring character, and we end with a famous case of fan service blue balls.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you a very special installment of Munch My Benson.

Johnny Pemberton was kind enough to spend far too much of his time with Adam and Josh, discussing his life, career, one-man show, and guest appearance on the Season 23 episode of SVU “One More Tale Of Two Victims” which we talked about back in MMB 184 - He’s Never Going to Get the Cum Blankie Back. He also talks a bit about his upcoming roles in the highly anticipated Amazon Prime series Fallout, what could have been with the Bo and Cheyenne Superstore spinoff that NBC passed on, and his upcoming leading man role in the dark comedy Mermaid from visionary Butt Boy director Tyler Cornack.

Still in Three-Parter Land, the Munchie Boys tackle the middle chapter of the BX9 saga that sends our intrepid SVUs north to the Bronx, where they have to continue fixing Bronx SVU while Liv chases down the gang that took a run at her with machetes last week. This means Liv has to trust Captain Mike Duarte (a tall order for her), and this means that Duarte has to trust that Liv can relearn how to police without getting waylaid by tunnel vision, the thing that led to this situation in the first place but which Liv won't accede to being the case. Fortunately, we continue to get new blood working cases, which actually makes for some SVU that's probably more interesting than any 24th-season episode of a television show should be.

In the first episode of a sweeping, mega, three-parter, Benson and Noah are nearly hacked to death by a crew of gangsters with a deep grudge. This sparks SVU to head north to the Bronx, meet some new and old friends, attempt to fix a massive NYPD screwup, and solve the rapes of 6, or maybe 12, young deaf girls. Get comfortable because we are going to be in this case for a while.

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…

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.

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.

Things get spicy when Benson, Rollins, and Tamin go to a convention hosted by a hot women's wellness brand and leave with more than just a treasure trove of impossible vibrildos and yoni eggs. Adam's middle school trumpet rival leads an ensemble cast that some how adds up to less than the sum of its parts in this "bad boss is raped by worse employees in a ludicrous scheme to kick her out of the business" caper.

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.

When we think about what SVU is "about," things like advocating for victims of sexual abuse or normalizing coming forward about abuse or copaganda generally come to mind. This episode, however, is about something entirely different. It postulates that the entire state of New Jersey is irredeemably corrupt and downright evil. From the seagulling scumbags of the cold open to the heights of political and judicial power, the Garden State would appear to have no good side. Did onerous bridge tolls, overpriced beach towns, and the inability to pump ones own gas so poison the Season 15 Writers Room as to turn them this decisively against Jersey?

Sit back, and try to imagine an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where Olivia Benson, be she Detective or Sergeant or Lieutenant or Captain, finds herself held captive in a hostage situation. Go ahead. Any scenario that could land her in the middle of a standoff with just her wits (and SWAT standing by) to get her out of the situation.

Now, in that hypothetical situation you concocted in your head, things happened to get her there, right? Well, "Townhouse Incident" presupposes a scenario wherein Liv finds herself in a hostage situation in MINUTE TWO.

Yes, you read that right. The 2:12 mark, in fact. In a show where the first 0:21 is taken up by the intro and title card.

This was our Vietnam.

A high-period Neal Baer episode which careens wildly from squabbling cub scouts to open-relationship-having MMA legends to racist frat houses and finally to Riker's Island prison gangs educated by one of the absolute legends of alt-country with a healthy dose of our favorite single season star, Chester Lake, thrown in. This SVU goes places none of us could have expected, including having one of the most recognizable guest actors in the episode die in the most disrespectful way possible after a single line of dialogue. It's really something.

Responding to a grisly crime scene, the Unit are called upon to investigate the murders of a father, daughter, and son, who were stabbed a bunch of times while they slept in their Upper West Side brownstone. As the case unfolds, a team of SVUs who've literally seen every horrible thing known to humankind, act shocked that a mother could murder her whole damn family to protect them from descending into the middle class.

Along the way, the Munchie Boys encounter characters who've been established for many years acting in ways that they wouldn't, fake NASCAR fandom, and a very bad mom/lawyer. Oh, and the episode forces one of them to do a particularly disturbing Google search for the umpteenth time in the history of this podcast.

A series of seemingly unconnected rapes forces Fin Tutuola to join forces with a man who never sleeps. A man who knows the precise tenor and pitch of every recycling center's lunch whistle in the city limits. A man who walks. A man named Chester Lake. We also meet our first perpetrator who staffed the Obama White House, and one of the vics totally isn’t Amanda Rollins—she just looks like her, right?