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.

When a sting to catch a groomer pedo goes sideways in a New Jersey train station, Alexandra Cabot disregards due process, civil rights, and decades of precedents in the pursuit of a conviction. We see the SVU debut of everyone's favorite legal hard ass, Elizabeth Donnelly, we learn about a particularly outlandish purchase that Josh is contemplating, and we definitively answer that age old question: Who's the boss? Those wanting Adam's airport rankings or our views on the relegation system in world football are encouraged to sign up for the Munchies tier on our Patreon. Enjoy!

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 Adam a bit to talk about.

This week we meet a pair of new detectives, a new showrunner, and a perfect family from Ohio who have the worst possible trip to the Harry Potter store in Union Square. We have way too much stuff to talk about, including Josh's various brushes with death and Pavement, Adam's exotic transit options, why you wouldn't want John Edwards summoning your dead family members, Fin's rapidly expanding consciousness, and, of course, how to wear a fanny pack without becoming a mark for ne'er-do-wells. We also meet a minor character who expands the greater Munchiverse exponentially. Until we rolled this one, we weren't even sure our Randomizer could pick from the latest season, so here's a big plug for the best episode spinner on the web: episode.lol

Why do any non-New Yorkers even bother coming to the big city? They're just gonna get turned out within minutes. Of course, that might give them the chance to service a john of Broadway Joe's caliber. This one does quite the about-face halfway through, making the wild left turn from teens being forced into prostitution fresh off the bus at the Port Authority into a dive into the unending effects of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and how it’s downing our sports idols. Obviously it was going to end up there, right? This is SVU, after all.

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.

Elliot meets another father of a daughter, only the other father's daughter just died in an alley having just been sodomized, 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. Of course, there are tangents, including a dive into the NYPD's heinous brutality done unto Abner Louima, so hold onto your butts.

This episode of SVU is so goddamn fun, guys. Rebecca De Mornay (no, not from the homeless shelter) hatches possibly the most outlandish plot ever devised on network television involving implanted mouth semen and Special Forces assassins, all to ensure that her milquetoast husband only ever has eyes for her. Wild stuff. Obviously there is a TON of stuff to talk about including the 1951 Academy Awards, the unionization of Strip Clubs, Lethal Weapon, the greater Shermerverse, the Bronx Zoo, and the future of this podcast. This is an episode to enjoy with your entire family--provided, of course, that they are down to listen to detailed discussions of the half-life of jizz loads. Special thanks go out to my other favorite Rebecca De Mornay, Sonya Eddy, who has sadly never performed in a Law & Order franchise.

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.

What happens when a super rich girl gets cut off after her umpteenth parentally funded business venture fails? Well, since this is SVU, a grisly double homicide hastily staged to look like a murder-suicide, followed in short order by a slew of hits taken out on the Unit after they ignore Sarah Paulson/Anne Gillette's extreme white privilege, and an off-the-books massive undercover fake jailbreak operation against Cragen's explicit orders that they were all off the case.

There's also plenty of class warfare, crapping on abstract art, and multiple undercover ops, one of which includes Liv domming out on a bootlicking blue blood. And don’t worry, this still opens plenty of doors to vanish through, so if you want to know how abstract art got funded, and what nefarious organization was doing it, look no further than this episode of Munch My Benson.

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!

What happens when SVU drops a fading Norman Mailer analog into a Ripped-from-the-Headlines family drama with his daughters pitted against his new wife, who the daughters think is sending dear ol' dad to an early grave by way of force-fed Viagra? Rectal probe electroejaculation and lewd talk of stiff, varnished eels, obviously.

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!

In a return to randomness after last week's Munchies' Choice, the Munchie Boys were thrown back into the pre-historical realm of Season 1, where SVU was still trying to figure out what it was. "Hysteria" was the franchise's first foray into the world of serial rapists/killers and sex workers, and given what we've seen thus far in Season 1, it's fair to assume that these subjects are handled, ummm, indelicately.

Don’t worry, there’s also tons of weird stuff like improbable shoe detective work, random doctors prescribing self-administered hot meat injections, the trans/cis sex workers’ turf wars of this universe leading Adam to look into the history of Times Square, both the Def-Leppard-related and non-Dep Leppard-related past of the diagnosis of hysteria, and real-life Vice cops going down in brothel busts. This one is wild in the ways you want an SVU to be.

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.