Munch My Benson: A Law & Order: SVU Podcast

Sometimes an SVU really does the racism. Then there's S7E6 Raw, which for an unfathomable 20:51 unfurls bigotry at an astonishing rate--an average of once every 23 seconds. And it doesn't even start until past the 16-minute mark. They pack so much hate into this episode that it left Adam and Josh dumbfounded. We've also got Marcia Gay Harden back which means: a) bodies will drop, b) Stabler will g...

The host of a wannabe TCAP ('To Catch A Predator') takes the law into her own hands in an attempt to track down the serial killer that abducted her sister 18 years ago. In talking about the guest stars, Josh pulls a trick no-one saw coming, and we wax poetic about 'Staten Island Shore,' the show we wish we had been watching instead. At least Sonya Paxton gets written off the show here, so that's c...

While we felt like the title of SVU Season 8 Episode 22 "Screwed" was a little on the nose, it did provide ample ground for the usual Munchie business. We brainstorm a potential series of extreme #Beachhead fanfic, Adam casts his dog's voice actor, and Josh proposes an elaborate conspiracy by the showrunners against their own cast members. Enjoy! Music: Divorcio Suave - “Munchy Business” Thanks to...

Fin and the Unit get sucked into a rap beef that wouldn't put Kendrick Lamar and Drake to shame. As apparently has to be the case, Fin knows one of the rappers in question, going way back to his childhood with "Snake" Anderson. SVU brings in a big gun in Snoop Dogg and recognizable other talent of color in Orlando Jones and Amber Stevens West, but this is Season 20 SVU , so hoping that any of thes...

If you were expecting a nuanced take on the damage that prisons cause to those inside coming from in "Escape" (S5E11), you might be disappointed. In this SVU, two cons (Stephen Lang and Michael K. Williams) buy their way out of the joint, galavant around the town in drag, and take Olivia Benson to the Jersey Shore. We meet one of Liv's former paramours, decide whether or not unfortunate early '00s...

When the son of an influential right winger is found beaten to death and drenched in semen, red herrings abound until we learn the shocking truth. That truth is that the munchies are in the throes of a full on Cassidissance. Our boy mayhem keeps his head throughout this season 1 attempt to tackle the time honored debate as to whether a criminal's nature causes them to commit heinous acts, or wheth...

On this week's Munch My Benson, we wonder openly if the world would be a better place if the two leading actors from a certain 1985 Peace Corps comedy had a little less chemistry. While we certainly do break down this Season 12 stinker ("Delinquent") from the dark days just before Meloni left SVU , we go hard on the digressions in this one folks, so get ready for the only SVU podcast brave enough...

In yet another hysterical installment from this show, a young woman has the temerity to venture to the big city from her idyllic suburban life and immediately pays the price for that transgression. This being Law & Order: SVU , that price makes her a special victim. Here, a topsharking for hire--don't worry, we didn't know what that meant either--goes sideways real fast because Warren Leight's...

The Munchie Boys tackled a tough one this week, as Stabler is forced to investigate the murder of an admittedly odious perp he'd locked up previously. If ever there were an episode that wallowed in the "you can't choose your victims" edict, it's this one. "Victims" also has some pretty big names in it to go along with some pretty rough pre-9/11 fashion and a Guardian Angels storyline that gives Ad...

For our first ever Season 27 episode of SVU , we caught a fun ripped-from-the-headlines story that manages to do the impossible. This tale of a serial doula-duper whose escalating fraud eventually lands her in the lap of our heroes has a twist I never saw coming. Michele Fazekas and her writing room have managed to make Olivia Benson seem fresh and interesting. It's good stuff and leaves me optimi...

What happens when an accent choice derails an SVU where the initial crime is wrapped up in an open-and-shut murder at minute 19 and becomes a bizarre cold-case-cum-morality-play sans benefit of flashback? Well, the Randomizer selected “Persona” (Season 10, Episode 8), so Adam and Josh found out the hard way. For far from the first time in the run of Munch My Benson, a foreign-born actor plays fast...

With the Unit and Liv in some serious transitional waters, IAB Lieutenant Ed Tucker comes in and muddies those waters up something fierce as he draws Liv's new roommate/boyfriend Brian Cassidy into an undercover sting for the Rat Squad to earn him a gold star and re-entry to the hallowed halls of the proper NYPD. Of course, this being the Warren Leight years, Benson and her relationship are put th...

This week the Munchie boys watched “Counselor, It’s Chinatown” (S21E7) a wildly inappropriate Law and Order: SVU which has Josh and Adam careen from such wildly disparate topics as: Is noted scumbag Chris D'Elia is a cardigan guy? Which professions suffered most during the Chinese Cultural Revolution? And, does the NYPD have an undercover dog requisition service? We'll rub and tug our way to the b...

This week the Munchies chose an episode in which Adam "Gamergate" Baldwin introduces us to everyone's favorite ADA, Raphael Barba. Rollins, Munch, and Amaro start a book club about the hottest new chic-bondage-lit sensation, Twenty-Five Acts , whose author turns out not to be the author which doesn't prevent her from being raped by a terrible talk show host, who shockingly is not a cabinet member...

After Adam tells of his travails in the Texas winter storm and ensuing power outages, the Munchie Boys get down to business, reckoning with the ghost of series past while persevering through an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featuring a robot child mimicking human emotion stuck in the strangest of custody battles in “Stolen” (S3E3). While dealing with a bonafide Cragenisode court...

What if Carl from Shameless was a homicidal maniac in training? That's the question this episode of SVU poses, and it's the one the Munchie Boys have to wrestle with here. They are also forced to wonder if psychopathy is endemic to a privileged youth and if waffles are the breakfast of choice for youngsters with an unquenchable bloodlust, so this one definitely trods into some weird turf. Music: D...

Elliot meets another father of a daughter, only the other father's daughter just died in an alley having just been sodomized and humiliated, meaning there's some sympathy pain for Stabes to experience. These fathers are both on a tear, and it's hard to say who does more damage in this one. Needless to say, if Stabler’s getting reprimanded by Cabot for helping a suspect, things are topsy-turvy in D...

This week's episode starts with a mutilated corpse found in the Hudson then heads out on a wild ride from amateur porn shoots to borderline psychotic astronomy fans. We also learn the deep mystery behind Dickie Stabler's name, and we see Elliot's faith in his boyhood heroes get shattered like the glass display case into which he throws Big Dick Finley (James 'Fucking' Brolin). Lots to see here fol...

In this exercise in somewhat effective stunt-casting, Stabler gets pitted against his untethered analog, a rage-fueled annihilator of tween girls played by erstwhile star actor Matthew Modine. Yes, this week, the Munchie Boys took on “Rage” (SVU S6E17). In a structurally odd episode that pits rager against rager in a ticking-clock, nearly locked-room scenario until it suddenly isn’t and renders mu...

How bad can a foot fetish get? Pretty bad, apparently... The Tibetan Freedom Movement, haute couture boots, Green Card marriages, and extreme foot fetishism all collide in this classic grab-bag installment of SVU . A couch ends up being at the center of the action in this episode, which we'll all assume got the sitting Vice President of the United States all hot and bothered. We also have a stealt...

This week, The Munchie Boys tackle a Finisode preoccupied with unpacking Fin's history while an undercover with Narcotics, more than a decade after the fact. Rollins gets improbably shot, which leads to an unhealthy dose of police brutallity and metaphorical prison rape threats, but that's not nearly as shocking as some truly disturbing home-decor-driven revelations upon meeting a seemingly normal...

This week, the randomizer gifted us with the full Season 1, Sex Crimes, experience. Were there wildly salacious, sexual details? Check. Was there an unnecessary amount of esoteric racism? Obviously. Was there a heavily featured banana in a butt? Yes there was. We also get whisked along on Adam's memory lane as he waxed poetic about his time on Brighton Beach. Music: Divorcio Suave - “Munchy Busine...

For Father’s Day, the Randomizer decided to troll dads everywhere with a tale of woe and trauma that sure makes one father look AWFUL. We watched "Redemption In Her Corner" (S21E13) this week. Don’t worry though because plenty of other people get some stink on them too because this is Law & Order: SVU , after all. As per usual, Adam and Josh go down innumerable rabbit holes—trying to figure ou...

While the later stages of the Neal Baer Era of SVU were often punctuated by whiplash-inducing flips of the script into wild new directions, few episodes start off in as strange a place as this one. In what might just be the only time in this show's nearly 600-episode run, we dive into the world of vampirism. Yes, vampires. And don't worry, despite the sad fact that SVU apparently exists in a world...

With a melange of Ripped from the Headlines story points peppering the subject of this week’s installment, Season 5, Episode 8 “Abomination,” there is A TON for Adam and Josh to talk about, including Matthew Shepard, Lawrence v. Texas, the odious Westboro Baptist Church, the sham that is conversion therapy, and Oscar-nominated actor George Segal. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of talk about what...