Have you ever heard the old joke about the longest-running scripted drama in television history doing a bizarre ripped-from-the-headlines episode about two aging, hoarder brothers as a convoluted excuse to say nasty slurs on primetime TV? Oh, you haven't? Well, after you've seen "Alta Kockers," you will have. Oh, and one of these brothers, who hasn't left his mother's house since 1976, somehow becomes the literary voice of the present generation via his anonymously published novel. Sure.

This one is about as absurd as SVU gets, but thankfully wonderful moments from legends Judd Hirsch and Wallace Shawn, and some truly standout background acting prevent this from being an all-time stinker.

Plus: Special Contibutor Natalie graciously joined Josh with a dissenting opinion to tell us why our ranking of 'Service" (S19E18) which we covered in MMB 119 - No, Rollins Is A Tactile Detective was unfair.

What happens when a trailblazing female Army Ranger is sexually assaulted, jeopardizing a nationwide media blitz? The Munchie Boys found out this week, and whatever it was, it wasn't fun. Or good. Or memorable. Go along for the ride as they investigate Army guidelines for haircuts, bizarre Army propaganda, full pressers out of nowhere, and false accusations undercutting our victim's status as sympathetic figures.

Also find out how Adam liked his leaf-peeping that possibly infected an entire train full of yahoos, get more Hudson Fjord talk, and follow along as Adam and Josh wonder from what universe this truly unprofessional episode of SVU came.

Both Josh and Adam were a little sick when they recorded this one, but not nearly as sick as the twisted minds inside Michael Chernuchin’s SVU writers’ room who crafted this byzantine scheme wherein a 13-year-old girl convinces her 15-year-old sister to murder their own father, so she can become adopted by and live with the love of her life, a 30-something weirdo who lives down the hall who reads Shakespeare with her. Obviously, the Munchie Boys are forced to confront The Bard among many, many other topics including the real reason no one on SVU orders food at the Square Diner and the many spellings of “Catherine.”

To say Law & Order: SVU's historic treatment of the transgender community is fraught with problems is an understatement of epic proportions, and this week's episode--S17E13 Transgender Bridge--makes, ummm, progress? Of course, it's incremental at best, and much of the ground gained is immediately lost by jamming the episode full of racial stereotyping that plays rough.

This week's episode pushed the Munchie Boys so far out of their comfort zone that they brought in reinforcements in the form of a guest segment (for Munchies, this will be as an entirely separate Bonus Episode) with gracious trans listener Summer, who hopefully makes up for the two cishet honkies who host this weekly show and is more qualified to speak on how this episode still had a lot of work to do to get things right.

Hold onto your butts. This is a long one.

While SVU's attempts at sad morality plays about the children who slip through the cracks when publicly funded institutions are stripped to the bone to pay for advanced cod-pieces for our police forces don't always land, we at Munch My Benson always have plenty to discuss. When five-year-old Bruno wanders the streets in search of some tasty treats, did the store clerk try to get him arrested for shoplifting? When Benson goes hobnobbing with the hot stuff downtown, did her wardrobe match her pension status? Did Dodds just force Dodds upon the unit. Also, Rollins is ultra pregnant, and Whoopi Goldberg works a lot.

Picking up where we left off last week, things get even Durstier as ME/murderer Carl Rudnick jumps bail, leaving the Unit in his dust, making a break for the border, and giving us as close as we’re going to get to an SVU/Midnight Run mash-up. And of course, Rollins needs to keep being the Clarice to Yates's Hannibal, so he can smell how pregnant she is. Unlike a lot of two-parters, this one’s actually a lot of fun, with anything from Rollisi’s cholesterol-hardened livers and Buffalo fair game to be cut into on the slab.

In Part 1 of an epic double-episode of SVU, we see Rollins Clarice-it-up with the truly disgusting serial killer Dr Greg Yates, whilst ME Rudnick Robert-Durst's-it-up in a shocking series of ante-mortem dismemberment murders. Along the way, we talk about State Fair fare, address justified criticisms of the podcast, and debate whether or not serial killers have a peculiar sense of smell.

Sure, this SVU spends a lot of time presupposing that we are heavily invested in the lives of minor recurring characters, but it also introduces us to a delightfully crass BBQ slinger with a penchant for lewd double entendres and forces us to go down all kinds of wild Munchian rabbit holes. Does Rollins have a separate person for her vacations at clothing-optional, adult-only all-inclusives? What scandals have engulfed the world of professional canoeing? Is Adam capable of surviving as a single parent for more than a week? Did we just watch an extra torpedo a "career" in background acting for the chance at one pay bump? This is definitely one for the Munchie-curious as a full 45 minutes of banter about Josh's concert going, Lucas Duda, and the Yiddish language (among many, many other things) had to be left on the cutting room floor. Enjoy!

We see what happens when a bad mom and a dad with a ludicrously bad plan to snap her out of her bad mom-ness get together to ensure that their loving and sweet 8-year-old boy will suffer in the foster care system for the next 10 years of his life. Along the way we meet a lovable homeless man and an oft-interrupted yoga class, and we learn about Adam's hot life and Josh's cat-like reflexes. Munch away!

When we asked our Patrons to select an episode for us to watch, we were asking for a choice as depraved and cruel as this, the episode that see beloved ADA Rafael Barba exit the show in ridiculous (and frankly, insulting) fashion. This episode has everything--if by 'everything' you mean bad acting, nonsensical writing, bizarre plot holes, and Phillip Winchester attempting to cry. Bad though this episode might be, we have so much to talk about including whether or not it's a good idea to rear a spite child, Adam's day at the museum, and the importance of a showrunner. Fans of our digressions should head over to Patreon to hear extensive deep dives into Japanese Onsen culture and minor league baseball.

Why does Rollins hate sex workers? Why is Wayne Knight only in this episode for two minutes? Why did they commit zero screen time to showing why the perp did what he did? Why did they rip this story from the headlines to inelegantly wedge trans rights into the final third of the show? We watched "Service" from Season 19, and ideally there would be answers to all of those questions, but the Season 19 qualifier is all you actually need to know. There may not be answers to your questions. Such is life in Season 19 of SVU.

We watched the impromptu finale of Season 21, which lost four episodes due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. While that might not have mattered in most seasons of SVU, Season 21 was trying to do some things which definitely demanded resolution. Of course we talk about a whole range of ridiculous topics including early attempts at adding serialization to weekly procedurals, post-modern philosophy, and the Borg. Apologies for weird sound, particularly on Adam's track. He was having some software issues which hopefully have been resolved.

The Munchie Boys pick up where they left off last week, trudging through the murk as Ray’s tall brother faces the fallout from having been charged as a serial rapist while the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association possibly threatens Barba’s life for having the temerity to come after one of their guys. This fallout includes the first—and thus far, only—time an officer on the Unit dies in the line of duty, which gives Adam and Josh quite a bit to mull over while wondering why the stakes were lowered so much before offing him. Any episode that has Chekhov’s gun go off while also not having Chekhov’s gun go off means there’s going to be plenty of plot discussion to be had. There are also plenty of discussions about the typically insane things that SVU forces one to reckon with, namely intimidation wizards, phantom door-locking chicanery, the hilarity of needing apple boxes in hostage shoots, and much, much more.

This week we watched an episode unlike any other SVU in the catalog. A young girl from Kansas is abandoned by her Fireball-shooting friends, drugged with exotic psychedelics, raped, and forced to dig her own physical and metaphorical grave by the acolytes of a famed radical psychologist who just so happens to have been SVU's own resident Alice-In-Wonderland-expert Amanda Rollins's former guru. Between blue rape avatars, expensive music cues, and extensive literary references, things get pretty weird. This, of course, is all just fuel for the Munch fire as Josh and Adam discuss the hero's journey; pedicab culture; early 20th century Swedish folklore illustrator, John Bauer; famed ethnobotanist and drug user, Terrence McKenna; famed memoirist and sex haver, Anaïs Nin; and whether or not we're too old to pick up trendy new drug habits. This is a wild ride folks. Hold on tight!

Yet another Season 19 episode of SVU leaves the Munchie Boys scratching their heads wondering in just what world is this even occurring. Opening with an improbable YouTuber montage and having the case of the week closing with a full seven minutes of run time remaining to open the door for an SVU lyceum at a high school, this week’s 13 Reasons Why-inspired episode (Season 19, Episode 4 “No Good Reason”) is operating at one of the strangest frequencies we’ve encountered. This one forces Adam and Josh to reckon with vlogging that makes Eighth Grade seem totally comfortable, how and when they’re going to have to get a ChatSlam account for the podcast, and the murky demise of Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell.

This week, Josh and Adam are thrust into a terrifying world where the laws of physics and mankind are tossed aside without hesitation. That world is called Chicago. Our SVU for this week is sandwiched in between an episode of Chicago Fire (S3E7 “Nobody Touches Anything”) and a Chicago P.D. (S2E7 “They’ll Have to Go Through Me”). While one does not need to watch either of these to enjoy our SVU, we obviously dove into the deep end with a fun-loving crew of Vegas-visiting, zumba-instructing, bounty-hunting firefighters and then waded through the muck with a morally dubious band of police officers. It provided us with a veritable matryoshka doll of tangents within tangents as we break down all the action from nearly 3 hours of television. We talk Shirley Chisholm and the Chelsea Piers. We speculate about the kind of person who gets a Joe Paterno tattoo in 2021, and Josh gets Chicago pilled.

The Munchie Boys faced down a stark depiction of hard-scrabble life in the projects in Guardian (Season 19, Episode 21). As this is Chernuchin’s special brand of SVU, nuance is nowhere to be seen, and stereotypes nearly exclusively populate this world. But don’t think that just because this episode centers around a brother who’s pimped out his mother and sister that there aren’t the typical diversions, including a diatribe on French roast, a dive into the Five Percent Nation and its influence on ‘90s hip-hop and preservation of New York in 1968, and a brief discussion about the grotesque miscarriage of justice that was the arrest and conviction of the Central Park Five. It’s just another wild week in Munchland.

When we watched the conclusion to the two-part Season 19 finale ("Remember Me Too" Episode 24), we might have taken the opportunity to research the migration patterns of monarch butterflies or the structure of the Sinaloa Cartel or the various degree programs at Gonzaga were this a standard, functional installment of SVU. Instead, we were treated to a mind-melting melange of unbelievable plot lines, inconceivable character motivations, and abysmal acting. Was it good? Obviously not. Did we have fun watching and then excoriating this complete and utter waste of network resources? You bet we did.

What happens when the season from which light cannot escape—SVU’s 19th—bestows upon the world a two-part season finale? An unintelligible, unmitigated disaster. Reality and common sense fold in on themselves, and we’re all left to try to make sense of the hellish mess that is “Remember Me” (S19E23). When character motivation, logic, and how technology actually works are entirely discarded, you are left with a confounding mélange of nonsensical dialogue and wild conclusions with nary a passing relationship to reality. Needless to say, this ride—a wild one for all the wrong reasons—gave the Munchie Boys plenty to discuss.

This week’s entry into the annals of Munchstory—SVU, S21E5, “At Midnight In Manhattan”—sent Adam and Josh caroming between three different stories in a rare exercise in single-weekend, multi-case, mom-card trumping storytelling, heavily featuring Carisi and Kat learning the ropes on their respective new jobs. Along the way, they decry the misidentification of doors, lament casting miscues, weigh the virtues of manners in new environs, and work their way through the indignity of seeing a slew of rich men’s knees. So come for the shoe-shaming, and stay for the nap chat whilst getting your Munch on.