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March 31, 2025 97 mins
Another Paternity Leave Installment, and this time we're going with a pretty famous double-ripped-from-the-headlines episode. Patreon payments are frozen for the time being. A few resourceful new Munchies have figured out a work-around where you can join as a free member and upgrade from there to a paid account which charges you for one month and unlocks the back catalog behind the respective tier of the paywall. After that first payment, you won't be charged again until we're dropping new content (which we'll warn everyone is coming), so if you want more of this it can be had, along with access to the fully uncut episodes from 100 to present and Movie Club episodes.

We at Munch My Benson like to go off on tangents, and the intellectual fuel provided by "American Tragedy" (S15E3) propelled us pretty far out there. We learn about old New York when it was still basically New Amsterdam; we break down Cybill Shepherd's accent as it wavers in and out of caricature; we delve into the Trayvon Martin and Paula Deen cases from whose headlines this episode was ripped; we learn about John Cougar Mellencamp's extended family; and, we definitely talk about whether or not it's socially acceptable to deck a bald man in the middle of the night on a lonely street corner. Enjoy!

Sources:

The Five Points - Wikipedia

Trayvon Martin's Parents Five Years On - The Guardian

The Real Problem With Paula Deen - Eater

Music:

Divorcio Suave - “Munchy Business”

Thanks to our gracious Munchies on Patreon: Jeremy S, Jaclyn O, Amy Z, Diana R, Tony B, Zak B, Barry W, Drew D, Nicky R, Stuart, Jacqi B, Natalie T, Robyn S, Christine L, Amy A, Sean M, Jay S, Briley O, Asteria K, Suzanne B, Tim Y, John P, John W, Elia S, Rebecca B, Lily, Sarah L, Melsa A, Alyssa C, Johnathon M, Tiffany C, Brian B, Kate K, Whitney C, Alex, Jannicke HS, Roni C, and Nourhane B - y’all are the best!

Be a Munchie, too! Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/munchmybenson

Be sure to check out our other podcast diving into long unseen films of our guests’ youth: Unkind Rewind at our website or on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Kids can survive incredible trauma, but when they crump, they
crump quick. The crump, all the vitals go south, all
at once.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
So we're looking at a homicide.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Is getting shot?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
What killed him?

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, Julne said that she fired in self defense. I
can't speak to that. But there was no filing or
stippling on his body. He wasn't that close to her.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Is it possible to stipling disappeared during surgery?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
It can't. Stippling burns into skin.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
What about on the clothing?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
You mean after ems the evidence mangling service cut his
clothes off through the bullet hole. I will hunt them
down and kill them, Melenda. Sorry, Joline said that he
was afoot away. Well, she's either lying or confused.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Find out which one it is, Finn.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Before you go to Shay, Joline, you might want to
use our men's room. Come again, my ex's nephew worked there.
When the kitchen toilet broke, she wouldn't let the help
use the customer restroom. They had use a diner across
the street.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Thanks. In New York City, sexually based offenses are considered

(01:23):
especially heinous.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
These are their stories.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Hello and welcome to munch My Benson. My name is Adam.
I am coming from a very cool and comfortable New
York City. I am joined the line by Josh, how's
it going up there in Minnesota?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Josh, that's also cool and comfortable.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Just saw friend of the pod Sean McGrath and creator
of episode dot L L flat.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
So s for you if you're listening again, if you
are planning an Army Hammer episode, let us know. Sean
would be a great stand in for for our.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Favorite and analog and a stand in. Yeah, I want
him to just get stand in work. The stand in
is very specifically something else in the film industry. Sure,
he doesn't need to just like stand there and get lit.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, but he would be a great cannibal actor. That's
what we're saying.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, for sure. And if you need if you need
a real for an example, look no further than Deep Dark,
which I believe is still available on Amazon Prime.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Or you know Twilight.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Anyways, guys, uh So, I've I don't know, I've had
some adventures over the last few days, but I haven't
really been watching anything new. I've been watching Mayor of Eastown,
which I think I mentioned last week, and it's great. Uh,
it's coming. It's building to a thrilling conclusion, it seems
in the accents are still ridiculous, But I haven't finished it,

(03:02):
so I can't give my thoughts on the series as
a whole. You've been watching anything, Josh.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
We just finished season two of ted Lasso, A season
finale dropped two days ago as of taping. Nice, So
I think you know, season two mostly worked, So.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
You know what, I'm gonna reel that back because I
did watch at least most of Children of the Corn
last night before falling asleep, and holy hell that that movie.
Uh it kind of slaps honestly, Josh, there's those kids
are violent. Yeah, you know, they's still like kind of

(03:41):
toned down for Hollywood, but wow, they the knives are
out at the beginning of that film.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Right one. I just watched most of Remo Williams last night.
Nice Nice, which I had not seen somehow, but would
be a good idea for one of the other podcas
cast ideas that we're kicking around trying to think.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
I don't think i've seen Remo Williams either, so maybe
maybe I should see it.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's fun, Yeah, it's fun, Yeah, excellent and you know,
kind of crazy in that way that it seems like
only eighties movies were.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, when there were a lot more drugs.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, when cocaine was flowing through the whole. I don't
want to say that there's not still a place for
cocaine in Hollywood, you know, and that you know air
quotes Hollywood, you know, in the industry, but like it
really had a home there. There is a kind of

(04:44):
the seventies and eighties.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
There's a bedrock of professionalism that exists today that I think, you.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Know, well, it's just exploitation, but.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Yeah, exactly. But you there were.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Follow i a stories on Instagram people, there.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Was just this like les level of madness that everybody
kind of accepted back then. You know that you would
suspend disbelief when you walked into the movie theater, and
I don't think people do that when they're watching films
on their couch, you know, on Netflix or whatever. Right,
But I have been spending a lot of my free
time reading about the history of the city that I

(05:20):
live in, New York, and some of that actually comes
up in this episode in a strange way, but in
a way that I found interesting. Now, one particular little
nugget that I learned that basically blew my head just
completely off my shoulders. Was I learned the etymology of
the word hooker, which I know what we have kind

(05:42):
of talked about a lot because that comes up in
Law and Order SVU.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Is it related to Red Hook?

Speaker 3 (05:50):
It's not related to Red Hook at all. It is
related to a different hook in New York called Corlier's Hook.
So if you look at a map of Manhattan, you
start down at the battery, and if you go up
the East River, which is if you're looking at the
map up the right side, it kind of goes fairly
to the east and then it turns north. In that

(06:11):
place where it turns north is called Corlier's Hook, and
that's kind of the southeastern edge of the Lower east Side. Now,
historically the Lower east Side was a slum. It wasn't
the worst slum in the city, we'll get there later,
but it was definitely one of them, and it was
known to be frequented by street walkers, both male and female.

(06:34):
And so the term hooker comes from Corlier's Hook, where
lots of them worked back.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
In the in the olden days when New York was
nineteenth century presumably.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, in the nineteenth century when New York was a
lot more fucked up than it is now. But yeah,
Red Hook. Don't mean to bismirch red Hook, but it
is a industrial part of Brooklyn that, you know, back
in those days barely existed at all. It became more
industrial in the early twentieth century and is now where

(07:07):
the Gowanis Canal, one of the most heavily polluted waterways
on Earth, flows out into.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
New York Bay, the unfortunately pronounced Goannas Canal because it
should be gow Anus.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Shouldn't it.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's really it's really a goddamn shame that is not
gow Anus.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Indeed, man indeed. But yeah, So with that little, that
little fun fact out of the way, can we get
to this episode? I guess actually we should talk about
what we're drinking tonight. So, oh, sure, what you got, Josh?

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, I just came from a brewery.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
I was just at Insight, which is in northeast Minneapolis,
had some beers there, but now I'm home. I did
not bring any Insight beers home with me, so I
am now drinking a founds all day. IPA. Hey, yeah,
their session.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Great minds think alike because Josh, I'm also drinking a
Founders All Day IPA.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
That's hilarious. I just picked up a fifteen pack yesterday
because I was stuck at Target and didn't want to
cramp Jackie's style. Because I do not enjoy shopping.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, I few do, well, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, but I especially don't enjoy shopping with other people
when I'm not getting anything.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Uh huh. Yeah, I'm right there with you, bud.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, And so I tend to let her and go
to the other Well, no, no, if I'm with if
I'm along, I tend to rush things along because I'm
impatient and do not want to be there, and it's
gotten worse during the pandemic. So I just decided that
I would just skip the store altogether. I went into

(08:55):
the liquor section of Target, and the selections somewhat limited,
but yeah, I picked up a fifteen pack of the
All Day IPA and a twelve pack of a variety
pack of Surly Nice and a handle of Bulleyrye.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah. See, I went to I was at CBS yesterday
getting my flu shot, and I wanted to get some
cash back before I left. And you know, well, is.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
I don't know if it's the same in New York,
but in California, CVS liquor prices were fantastic.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Oh no, it's dog shit here, it's awful.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh no, no, CBS. CBS in California was some of
the best, some of the best prices you would get.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
I was floored at how expensive this, this fifteen pack was,
and it was merely my pride that prevented me from
just giving it back. And the fact that it was
thirty bucks for TV fuck twenty nine ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Holy shit, you don't want to know what I got
this for. I don't I got this and the twelve
pack for less than that.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
Jesus fucking Christ. Normally I twenty one bucks on a
fifteen pack of this stuff, which is not great. But
still it's fifteen beers, so it's not It's not the
end of the world. But yeah, I got rolled. Sometimes
you get rolled here. But I did get the flu
shot for free, so I guess I'm I don't know,
coming out even somehow.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, but it'll be you'll you'll get screwed there too,
and it'll be instead of pig flu or whatever the
fuck flu, they're shooting you up with it'll be it'll
be barn swallow flu.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, it's gonna be barn swallow flu. Man. I felt
like ass today. So and I know for a fact
because I talked to my kids pediatrician.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Did you feel like Guyinus?

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah? I did feel like Gwaynus today and I it
was speaking to my kid's pediatrician and she was telling
me that nobody there was no flu season last year,
and so the way they come up with what the
next flu season is going to be is based on
the previous years. The next flu SHOT's going to be
is based on the previous year's flu strains. It was

(10:59):
essentially flu last year because nobody no one went outside.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Nobody went outside, and everyone was wearing masks.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, And somehow since then, we've all kind of just,
I don't know, as a country, given up and just decided, okay,
it's all right, if you know, another six hundred thousand
people die, we'll turn.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
About fair play. And can I give up on this country?

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah? Well yeah, no shit. As a segue, I feel
like the unit almost gives up on this country by
the end of this episode. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
On the courthouse steps, I feel like there's a lot
of just resignation.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Now before we before I start this recamp. When I
went to watch this, I started watching the wrong episode
because on Hulu right before this is a two parter.
And if you go to watch season fifteen, episode three on.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Hulu, you'll did warn them last week also, but you
will start, because I'm aware of this.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
You will start watching a batshit insane episode that is
really fun. I know because I watched it, but it
is not this one, which.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Is who's in the next one.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
It starts, it's a Cassidy's focused episode and it's okay,
just with one of the most punkers things I've ever
seen an SVU, And so I think I want.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
To which, as we should have established at this point,
if we're saying that.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
It's bonkers, it seemed like it should have been from
like a I don't know, an eighties movie, like a
John Carpenter eighties movie or something. I don't want to
give too much away. But it starts.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
We'll get to it adventure, Yeah, we will, we.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Will, but highly recommend so that one's a lot of fun.
American tragedy is the episode we are watching.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, so just let it roll. After this just keep
watching the next episode.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yeah, so we're watching American Tragedy, which is officially season
fifteen episode three, but again on Hulu is season fifteen
episode two. A serial rapist is attacking older white women
on the Upper West Side. Two of the victims describe
their attacks to detectives Rollins and Benson. Their assailant was
a young black man wearing a hoodie who grabbed them

(13:13):
as they were entering their homes, held a gun to
their backs, and told them I know you want it,
before throwing them to the floor and raping them in
their doorways. While the detectives want to solve this thing asap,
Sergeant Munch wants to keep the units overtime budget manageable,
so he tells them to get some rest and they'll
get to work in the morning. As Benson is walking

(13:33):
away from the precinct, she's approached by a schlubby, bald
cat collar. Benson, of course, is fresh off the hell
of her William Lewis torture trauma and isn't going to
suffer this kind of fool. Lightly before she knows what
she's doing, she breaks his nose with a punch and
lays his ass out flat on the trash and rat
strewn corner of Mulberry and Moscow, before walking off into
the night past a halfway decent and extremely cheap dumpling house.

(13:59):
The next day, Vnson shares her feelings about destroying the
hair challenged loser with her shrink, doctor Lindstrom. She's still
reeling from her awful experience, but the doctor thinks she's
doing okay, just as long as she limits the objects
of her violent outbursts to pathetic bald men. At the precinct,
tous Rolin's been Tomorrow and Monch are working the case.
A composite sketch of the attacker looks like it was

(14:20):
drawn by a toddler, and the fact that it used
a condom means they don't have any DNA samples to
work either. Benson shows up after her appointment, just in
time to discover that another older woman on the West
Side had been attacked last night. Unis are instructed to
start violating the rights of each and every young black
man they find in the neighborhood, and we witness a
tableau of perfectly innocent men being criminalized by the police

(14:42):
for the crime of being black in public. Next we
see a bemused and incredibly famous woman in a sequin
dress strolling home after a night of gala's or fancy
dinners or something. She becomes aware of a shape moving
behind her, a young black man in a hoodie who's
listening to music on his headphones. She turns to him
and says, what do you want? He says nothing, probably

(15:04):
because of the music, and keeps walking around the corner.
Rollins is admiring the blunt rolling skills of a bestopped
and befrist gentleman when a shot rings out through the night.
When s Fu arrives, the young man is laying prone
on the street, but still alive, while the woman, Joline Castile,
a celebrity chef, claims that she had acted in self
defense because he was about to rape her. The man

(15:27):
is actually a sixteen year old boy named macaud Carter.
He wasn't armed, and his parents arrived at the hospital
completely mystified as to why anyone would consider him a threat,
much less a rapist. Jolene tells Nick and Live that
he reminded her of the poster and that he didn't
respond when she asked him why he was following her.
She says she shot before he had the chance to

(15:47):
assault her. Mccott's parents explained to Finn and Rolinds that
their son played basketball near the victim's houses most nights,
but that he was a good kid and an honor student,
and that they believe Jolene shot him in cold blood.
The victims' IDs are the strongest, and he wasn't armed,
but he had plenty of opportunity. Still, Barbara wants more
evidence before he's willing to take this case to trial.

(16:08):
He speaks to Jolene in her attorney, who claims that
she shot because she feared for her life and would
do it again even though she's sorry for mccoud's parents.
Back at the hospital, Reverend Curtis Scott is sitting with
the Carters and vouches for the boy's good nature to
Finnan Rollins when a surgeon arrives and breaks the terrible
news that maccod is dead. As we watched the Carter's
world collapse, Rollins receives a call that the real rapist,

(16:31):
Willie Smith, has been caught in the act. Willie is
a remorseless monster who deserves the sharp need of the nuts.
He receives from Benson, but this isn't going to be
an easy case, considering two of the three previous victims
had idd maccad and Willie left no DNA at the scenes.
Willie was living in a shelter working as a cooking
oil recycler, so they start working in the previous rapes

(16:53):
looking for grease residue, and they start looking into mccod's
shooting to see whether or not it was justifiable. Upon
seeing will the victims all immediately recognize his disgusting hands
and hoodie. Warner's autopsy reveals that Macaud couldn't have been
as close to Jolene as she claimed. Warner also gives
the inside scoop about Jolene being as racist as a

(17:13):
Georgia golf game, and recommends that Finn used the Morg's
men's room given the lack of comfort he will find
at Shay Jolene live in. Finn speak to Jolene at
the restaurant, and while she sticks to her story, she
nearly jumps out of her skin when Finn touches her.
Then claim that Macaud told her you know you want it.
At detail, she'd neglect it to mention the several other

(17:35):
times she'd talk to the unit, so just to be clear,
this lady is super super racist. The next morning, crowns
of Black Lives Matters. Protesters surround the courthouse, and Parba
is beginning to feel like the social fabric of the
city depends on how this case turns out, so they
arrest Jolene. As she's being processed, she turns the racism
dial all the way up, but things are not looking

(17:56):
up for US viewers as the action turns to the courthouse.
Of course, Jolene's attorney makes the case that Jolene fit
the profile of the victims, and if SVU and two
previous vis id'd macad, how could Jolene have known that
he was innocent on a dark street at night. Tomorrow
digs up some radically racist dirt from Joline's past in
the form of lawsuits brought by black former employees of hers.

(18:20):
Judge Ong rules that these depositions aren't admissible, but that
if Jolene broaches the subject of her workplace racism, Barbara
can follow that thread. Barbara goes hard after Joline's past
unpleasantries and in the process thoroughly besmirches New Orleans lifestyle. Magazines,
but now the whole proceeding has devolved into a he said,
she said affair, where the jury can only hear what

(18:42):
she said because he is dead. While they're waiting for
the jury to return a verdict, Benson runs into Joline
in the restroom, where Jolene says she was sorry Macaud
was dead, but that Benson must know how vulnerable a
woman alone in the night can feel. While we know
that Benson had just recently been very much alone and
vulnerable at the hands of a monster, she said that

(19:04):
Macaud was just a boy and hardly a thread at all.
The jury returns a not guilty plea. The Carters are devastated,
the unit is bummed, and we are left with a
that's just the way it is. Some things will never change,
dick Wolf, and I apologize for this is too. Adam

(19:25):
recaps in a row with musical dick Wolves, but.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I use them too. It's fine.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
The way they left this one. I couldn't I really
couldn't go any other way. I mean, Finn basically says
it hornsby you know, yeah, absolutely, I can drop that in.
I mean, it's not it's not necessarily indicative of the
Man's you know, entire oove, but it is a classic.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's pretty tight. Yeah, I have that record.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, that's a good one. So guest stars, we got
a couple pretty big guest stars in this one, gosh.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
So first off, we've already talked about Leslie Odom Junior,
who's playing the Reverend, So if you want to listen
to us talk about him, we did that when we
were covering October Surprise, which we covered back in much
of My Bens in episode thirty eight. That is the
weirdest wonk boner I've ever heard of. He's also not
doing a bunch here, so I'm not going to talk
about him. There are a couple others that we have

(20:19):
talked about, but I'm going to go into it a
little bit when we get to them. Okay, okay, So
first one, I think we need to cover Sibyl Shepherd.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, Sybil Shepherd.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, So she is playing Joe Lene Castile. She was
a teen model out of Memphis who broke out in
her first film role as jac in Peter Pogdanovitch's The
Last Picture Show, for which she was nominated for a
Golden Globe in the nineteen seventies. She bounced back and
forth between hits and massive flops, starring in two Bogdanovic Bombs,

(20:52):
Daisy Miller and at Long Last Love, being sandwiched between
The Heartbreak Kid and Taxi Driver, both of which are phenomenal.
She also went from dating a completely drugged out Elvis
Presley to Peter Bogdanovitch, who I believe left his wife
for Sybil Shepherd Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Both of them were at least twice her age.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, I have a hard time reconciling Bogdanovich with his
I guess type. That strikes me as creepy. And it's
probably the kerchief that he wears around his neck does
not help things. But but yeah, yeah, I mean I
feel like.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
He's kind of a creep Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Probably, I don't know the man, but still.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
I mean, civil Shepherd. She was stunning, I absolutely gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
I mean, I'm not blaming him, but like you know,
he goes from her to Dorothy Stratton to Dorothy Stratton's sister.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
But she was okay, so she was twenty, she was
twenty six in Taxi Driver, Okay, that's.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Not yeah, but last picture shows five years before that. Yeah,
I think they got together about two years after Last
Picture Show came out. Anyway, regardless, we can move on
past this. In the late seventies, while studying with Stella
Adler and unhappy with the state of her career, she
turned to Orson Wells for advice. Orson Wells, of course,
was great friends with Peter Bugdanovic. Wells told her to

(22:23):
get up on stage and do the work, but away
from the bright lights and harsh critics of New York
or LA. So she went back to Memphis for a
bit to get stage work in. In nineteen eighty two,
she returned to the business, first doing a theater tour
and then landing in primetime soap The Yellow Rose, starring
opposite Sam Elliott. Despite its critical acclaim, that was canceled

(22:45):
after one season. Shortly thereafter, she landed in the phenomenon
that was Moonlighting. She played the lead role of Matty
Hayes opposite Bruce Willis, who was playing David Addison. Willis
broke the fuck out in this role. They both were
nominated for Emmys, but only Willis won. Moonlighting put Willis

(23:05):
on the map and sparked Shepherd's return with its first
three seasons being a huge hit before their stardom essentially
tore the show apart, with Willis splitting time in season
four shooting die Hard and Shepherd shooting all of her
scenes early in the season to work around her having twins,
so it didn't really work because they weren't in the
show together, and the show absolutely worked because of their chemistry.

(23:29):
It limped along for another season after that, but without
Glenn Gordon Karen, who created the show and left midway
through season four after a huge disagreement with Sybil Shepard.
So after Moonlighting died, she went on to be in
the films Chances Are, Texasville, Alice, and Once Upon a Crime,

(23:53):
before landing in her own CBS sitcom, Sybil, which was
created by Chuck Lorie and ran from nineteen four to
nineteen ninety nine. That garnered her three Emmy nominations, though
she did not win. Since then, she sort of settled
into like doing recurring guest spots and you know, like
minor feature rules, but she had recurring guest spots on

(24:17):
The L Word, Psych Eight, Simple Rules, Eastwick, and The
Client List. She's also been an activist for a long time,
championing abortion rights, gay rights, and she was honored in
two thousand and nine by the Human Rights Campaign with
one of two National Ally for Equity Awards. She was
also at the opening of the National Civil Rights Museum

(24:39):
in Memphis because she'd lent it financial support.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
She apparently also now is like a big Christian like
as of twenty fourteen, So I don't know what that
does with her abortion rights. One would assume she probably
didn't change that much, but who knows.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Anyways, interesting.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Next up, I've got Jeffrey Tambor. He's playing defense attorney
Ben Cohen. He was born in San Francisco and went
to the University of San Francisco and then got his
master's at Wayne State University. He moved to Milwaukee to
do repertory theater before getting to Broadway in a production
of Sly Fox in nineteen seventy six. He worked a

(25:24):
ton as he established himself, appearing in main roles on
the ropers Max Headroom and Mister Sunshine, and in the
films Mister Mom Desert Hearts the charbono in the hit
that we always talk about.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
We're podcast Ye.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
This is a Patricia Sharbono podcast. Is also in City
Slickers and Crossing the Bridge. In nineteen ninety two, he
landed the part of Hank Kingsley in The Larry Sanders Show,
for which he was nominated for four Emmys. A few
years after Larry Sanders showed Run Its Course, he found
himself getting nominated but losing more Emmys for Arrested Development.

(26:11):
He finally won an Emmy after seven nominations for Transparent,
playing transgender character Mora Fefferman. After four seasons on Transparent,
he left the show in the midst of a shit
storm of controversy, with multiple former crew members and assistants
accusing him of sexual misconduct. He maintained claims that he

(26:34):
never meant to make anyone sexually uncomfortable, while saying he
didn't remember any of the alleged incidents, he did cop
to having an anger issue throughout his career in a
piece on The Hollywood Reporter. This almost immediately blew up
in his face. Like a week later after trying to
claim that this was the possible explanation for some of

(26:54):
the claims, when in a group interview with The New
York Times with the Arrested Development cast, it came out
that he'd exploded at the Dearly Departed National Treasure Jessica
Walter on set.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
He hasn't really worked since so really yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
The last thing that he was in that I saw
that I liked, I guess there was the twenty nineteen
season of Arrested Development, but also the depth of Stalin
he was good in at.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, it's a good one. We've got Kevin Carroll who
is playing Corey Carter. Now he is popping back up
and we saw him as the kidney kneading boy's father
in parts which we covered back in munch My Benson
episode forty four, but they are turning a blind eye
when munch is going to steal that kidney and put

(27:43):
it in Marlee Matlin. He plays you can read put
it in Marley Matlin in two ways there.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
He plays a father really well.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, he's done it twice now and two different fathers,
so obviously this is a brain melt her but last
prison at the end of this one, well so far,
he will probably pop up as a grieving father again.
Next up, we've got Sonya Son who's playing Lisa Carter. Yeah,

(28:15):
she was Keema Kema Greggs in the Wire. So brain
meltaler once again. Her parents met in South Korea while
her father was serving in the Korean War. She graduated
from high school in Newport News, Virginia. She was discovered
as a slam poet by director Mark Levin. I can't
believe I didn't know this already, really, who enlisted her

(28:37):
and Saul Williams to write the screenplay for the hit
indie feature Slam, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
I had no idea, Yeah, I had.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
I mean, I've seen Slam. It was obviously the first
thing I saw her and I saw it like when
it came out, and somehow I had no idea that
not only was she destroyed the co star in it,
but she fucking co wrote it anyway. Then she also
directed the HBO documentary Baltimore Rising, about the twenty fifteen
Baltimore protests and community organizing that followed the BPD killing

(29:11):
of Freddie Gray while he was in custody. She's appeared
in the films Bringing Out the Dead, the Shaft remake,
the one with Samuel Jackson starring as Shaft, not the
second one with Samuel Jackson where it's his kid playing Shaft.
Whatever she's in Perfume, Step Up, Two, The Streets, and

(29:33):
High Flying Bird. She was also main cast in the
show Body of Proof, and had recurring roles in Cold Case,
Brothers and Sisters, Burn Notice, The Originals, Shut Eye, The Chai,
and Star Trek Discovery. Next up Bill Irwin playing doctor
Peter Lindstrom.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
At with long lists of credits in this.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
One, Yeah, this one like it's this is like four
people who like I kind of have to go in
oh yeah to at length.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
So.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
He was born in Santa Monica. He went to Oberlin
College and then went to Wringling Brothers and Barnum and
Bailey Clown College in nineteen seventy four. In nineteen seventy five,
he helped found the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco,
which is credited with helping kickstart the American circus revival.

(30:28):
He left Pickle Family Circus in nineteen seventy nine to
focus on stage work, but much of that stage work
was silent clowning. He was awarded the NEA Choreographer's Fellowship
in nineteen eighty one and again in nineteen eighty three.
In nineteen eighty four, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
and was the first performance artist to be awarded a

(30:49):
five year MacArthur Fellowship. In nineteen eighty eight, he wrote, directed, choreographed,
and starred in Largely New York on Broadway, which honored
him four Tony nominations and a Drama Desk Award for
Unique Theatrical Experience. He was nominated for another four Drama
Desk Awards for acting and won a Tony in two

(31:11):
thousand and five for playing George in Who's Afraid of
Virginia Wolf? On TV, he was Maryland's mime paramore and
two wonderful episodes of Northern Exposure.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Thank you for bringing us up?

Speaker 2 (31:24):
I fuck it. I mean that's what I know him
first from.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
He was in the Don't Worry Be Happy.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Videos, I know, but I didn't have MTV then, so like,
I don't I know he was in it, and I
have that note here, But like, the thing that I
know him from is those those two Northern exposures where
he is miming a courtship with Marylyn, who is like
the you know, kind of the least receptive person to
anything in the show, and it's just fucking fantastic anyway.

(31:52):
He was also Airmme Mister Noodle and Professor Television on
Sesame Street, appearing twenty five times from nineteen ninety two
to two nine. He's also in a fuckload of Almo
videos as those characters. So yeah, his his IMDb page
has a weird amount of Elmo in it.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
He was an goes Down, which I think we've mentioned
multiple time.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yep, he was. He's also he had recurring parts on CSI,
Lights Out, and Sleepy Hollow. He was main cast in Legions,
South of Hell and Monday Mornings in Films. In addition
to being an Iggy goes Down, he was in Popeye,
eight Men Out, My Blue Heaven, Hot Shots, A Midsummer
Night's Dream, the live action Grinch movie, Rachel Getting Married,

(32:35):
and Interstellar, where he voiced Tars.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, I still have fucking three more. Yeah, we've got
Cindy Katz, who's playing Chloe, the victim who didn't want
Tomorrow to think.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
She was racist? Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
She This is her fourth of four svus, including Turmoil,
where she played Shane's mother, which we covered back in
Munch of My Bents in forty three, another second unit
photo shoot, Gone Wild. She's also in two Criminal Intents,
in two episodes of the original series. She got her
MFA from Yale School of Drama. She was the second

(33:12):
build in the Mark Harmon mid nineties PI Star vehicle
Charlie Grace.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
She had recurring parts on Hack, Shades of Blue, Nothing,
Sacred and Friends. She had bit parts in Heat, The
Age of Innocence, Limitless, and Frances Ha And she's done
guest spots on tons of shows, including Fraser Murder. She
wrote Diagnosis, Murder, DS nine, Voyager, The Affair, and Silk Stockings.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Ooh, Robsts.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Okay, So next up, I've got Alice Barrett who played
Stella or sorry, she's playing Aubrey Trizzler here, but she
played Stella in Melancholy Pursuit, which we covered back in
munch My betson episode So everyone in episode forties like
as come back here in this episode.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
There's still another brain melter.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah yeah, this is maybe that episode we titled that.
Maybe they just assumed there was semen because Warren was there,
because Warner was there. This is her second of three svus.
She was born and raised in New York. Got a
BA in theater from Hunter College. Per Wikipedia. She's probably
best known for playing psychic Pi Frankie frame Winthrop on

(34:30):
Another World, which she played for seven years. I have
no idea what's going on with Another World, but I'm
interested in whatever that's. Whatever that is she was in.
She had recurring parts in Billions, one Left to Live
and Heels this year. Next up, I've got Francis jew

(34:54):
I hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. That's Jue. Yeah. Anyway,
he's playing Judge Stephen Ong.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
It's a weird career turn for.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Him because yes, this is his third Monch My Benson
episode that he's been in and his fourth episode of
SVU in total. The first three times on SVU whereas
doctor Fong yep, so he added an F and or
lost in F and became a judge. We saw him
and haunted back in much of My Benson Episode two.

(35:27):
Hot Mike Sandoval comes in the back Door and rock
a Bye, which we covered inch of My Ben's in
forty nine A Hooker's Chips and Donuts. Obviously, he is
not playing doctor Fong here, He's playing Judge Stephen Ong,
thus making this another brain melter. This is what four
or five five people, at least five at least fucking nuts.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
So.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
He was born in San Francisco, lives in New York,
now does a ton of stage work, having won an
Obie and been nominated for a Drama Award. He was
in Joyful Noise the Dolly parton Queen Latifah Church Choir
joint also featuring bunch alums Andy Carl and Jeremy Jordan.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Megan's Enjoying That Dolly parton podcast. I have not listened
to it.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Oh, yeah, it's good.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah. He was also in Noah Or. He's also going
to be in Noah Bombbox's upcoming adaptation of Don Delillo's
White Noise Weird, and he is the Chinese foreign minister
in twenty two episodes of Madame Secretary.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
There are other actors that we could talk about.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
But we've talked about actors for so long and we're
at minute thirty eight. I had to cut it off. Yeah,
it's true because we haven't even talked and we don't
need to talk about them too much. But we haven't
talked about the two fucking headlines that this episode is
ripped from. The first is obviously Trayvon Martin. Yeah, I

(36:57):
don't feel like we need to go into this too much,
because this is impossible to not know about him exactly.
Just in case you don't know who Trayvon Martin was.
On February twenty six, twenty twelve, about a year and
a half before this episode, Trayvon Martin was walking back
from a seven eleven from a seven to eleven to
his father's fiance's house in a gated community in Sandford, Florida,

(37:20):
when George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch guy of highly questionable character,
called in a suspicious person to the police. He was suspicious,
of course, because he was black and wearing a hoodie.
Minutes later, he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, who was
what fifteen I believe, yeah, I think so, and he
killed him, claiming that he had been attacked. Zimmerman was

(37:41):
eventually charged after a large outcry, was eventually charged with
second degree murder and manslaughter, but he was he was acquitted.
So that sucks. Paula Dean, Yeah, it also sucks. This
This all happened before this episode. This is the summer

(38:02):
before they were writing these episodes. So in June of
twenty thirteen, a few months before this episode, Pauladine was
sued for racial and sexual discrimination by Lisa Jackson. She
had had a history. Pauladine had had a history of
making derogatory comments about African Americans and had talked about
throwing a quote true Southern plantation style wedding for her brother,

(38:23):
complete with all black servants, but that she had to
nix that because of optics. The case was thrown out
with prejudice by the judge. Ironically, but in her deposition,
Pauladine admitted to dropping the enbomb sometimes but that it
had probably been decades, unless maybe it had been quoting

(38:46):
black people in stories. She lost a slew of deals,
shows and contracts, and then Jimmy Carter went out and
publicly begged for her to be forgiven for being honest
about her distant past and what Georgia had been like
in this. Of course, like two years later, picture surfaced
of Dean and her son from twenty eleven, just two

(39:06):
years before all this bullshit, where they were dressed up
for Halloween as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz with her
son in brown face. So it sure sounds like that
racism wasn't in the distant past.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
I mean, of course, if if you're gonna get disqualified
by going out in brown face. Tell that to the
nation of Canada.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah, who seems to have an incident every I don't
know three years that.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
Was caught on a dozen photos.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
It's fucking insane, so nuts.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
So yeah, Paula anyway, she made fried chicken and apparently
apparently it was popular food. Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Let's get to it.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah, let's get to it. Man.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
So so, I mean, the first line of the show is,
so the man who attacked you is black, And you know,
it takes about four seconds of run of show to
be able to safely say that this is going in
a racial direction. We've got a black serial rapist. But
even in later era SVU, there's no way this is

(40:21):
staying straight forward. It's not just going to be a oh,
we're going to catch this rapist kind of story. Obviously,
that's not what's going to happen here.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
Yeah, of course not, because I mean, because the catching
the rapist part of it is is such a small
part of the story, right, they have to throw a
big wrinkle and they do. Yeah. Now, of course they
kind of they kind of like telegraph that with the
way though, you know, particularly the third victim I think
kind of talks about, yeah, about the blackness of her assailant,

(40:55):
right like, like she kind of and she brings it
up a few times. You know, she doesn't want to
seem racist, but he was menacing, and.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
I mean, to be fair, he was a rapist.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
He was a rapist, and he brutalized.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Her, and a rapist with a gun would be menacing.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Absolutely, absolutely not. You know, they're telegraphing maybe where this
is going to go before before we see Sybil Shepherd
jauntily strolling down the.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Block, Rollinson live take the take sort of the statements
from the women from the victims in a montage. Yeah,
come out of this.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Fast cuts jumping style.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, we're just it's establishing that there's a fucking serial
rapist basically. But then they come out of there, and
Munch is like, we've already spent enough time, spent enough
overtime on those missing girls, which is obviously like talking
about whatever the fuck happened in the two episodes before this,
the two part of which I think William Lewis is
actually resolved at the end of the first one, and

(42:03):
then there's a whole nother second episode that has to
do with these girls that are being trafficked, so I
think or missing girls in that one. So I think
there's something more going on with the first two because
I think that most of the Lewis stuff, like the
season fourteen ends on a cliffhanger with her, you know,
being held captive by Lewis, and then I think that's

(42:23):
resolved over the course of the first episode, but that
somehow the first episode bleeds into the second one anyway,
so that's there's something going on. Much is worried about
ot Craigan's nowhere to be seen in this episode.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Much is the Boss.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
It's yeah, Much as the Boss, and I had to
I like scanned the episodes around it to be like, wait,
is Craigan here? Is Craigan there? Craigan pops up again,
so he's definitely like still in charge, So I don't
know what. Maybe he's suspended or something and it just
doesn't I don't know.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Anyways, Yeah, Much show so Much made the wrong call
here because I don't know.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
That he did though, because the only thing that was
going to happened was that Rollins was wanted the sketch
artist to come in, and the sketch artist holy shit. Sorry,
I'm like, you'se don't say that.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
This sketch is useless.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
That's what I said.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
You never know, give it a shot, alert the media,
the neighborhood. Maybe we'll catch a break.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Like that sketch, like like an eight year old was
trying to do a sketch of somebody. It was terrible, brutal,
but yeah, Munch tells them to get some sleep. When
Rollins proposes that they get a sketch artist.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Neither Rollins nor Benson seem pleased at the suggestion, but
again like nothing nothing changes here. They're not going to
be able to If they were.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Out violating people's rights that night, maybe they would have
stopped the thing.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Josh, so frustrating. Okay, so Live then really reacts to
a guy getting on her in the classic like New
or construction worker kind of way.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
I mean, so, for one thing, this guy, this guy
is not he's like doing a classic New York construction
worker thing. But he's all alone in the middle of.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Alone, on a stoop and a draw like I don't know,
I mean, he's he he should have Well, I'm not
going to advocate for police assaulting people.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
But she did not know that she was a cop.
She didn't have to.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Identify clearly because she fucking dropped him ship.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
So the bald guy, this is where I want to
digress for a moment, right because okay, so Live destroys
this guy and it's uh, it.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Lights him up immediately, just fucking clocks him in the nose.
I think drops him.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
Considerably more cathartic the way she destroys this guy than
the way she drops the actual rapist, because you go, like, uh,
he's already in cuffs.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, she needs she needs that guy in the nasense whatever.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
But she destroys this fucking bald piece of lights up
who looks like, yeah, this guy is the stereo typical
construction worker from you know, like a nineties film, right, Like,
I don't know that construction workers actually dress or look
like this guy, and they're certainly not necessarily hanging out
on that STUPI in the middle of.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
This is the construction worker straight from Central.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Casting exactly, because we can see in the background enough
information that I know exactly where that is. And I
have a lot to talk about with that, and I'm sorry,
I'm sorry that I do, But that is at the
corner of it's cool.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
We're only at We're only at minute forty eight and
we're in the first what the first five minutes of
the episode now.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Not even we have not gotten to the credits yet.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Luckily, my notes are are going to get a lot
more smart.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Same same. So that is at the corner of Mulberry
and Moscow. Now that is right now. It is kind
of in the it's in the southern part of Chinatown.
But that neighborhood didn't always used to be Chinatown, because
that used to be near the very center of the
most dangerous slum in not just America, but probably the

(46:02):
entire world. It was called Five Points. It was the
neighborhood from Gangs of New York, if you remember it,
and it was so bad that, in fact, they built
the whole civic center of New York where the big
New York Supreme Courthouse is that we see almost every episode.
They built that over the remains of half of Five Points,

(46:23):
to bury it into the dustbin of history. But so
she's walking past it's called the Wawing Song Funeral Home,
and in the background you can see the it's called
the shit what is it called? It is called oh
Chatham Towers. Now Chatham Towers is like a weird Soviet.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Style, some weird sad brutalist building.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
Yeah, it's like a Soviet style like apartment block. But
it is actually built on top of what was the
most notorious building in New York's storied history of crime.
It was called Tard's Brewery, also known as the Old Brewery.
Now this place dates back to seventeen ninety two, and

(47:08):
I will read a real short excerpt describing it because
it's such a wild place and I've been diving into
this shit, so i had to talk about it because
it's like I've been thinking about this block. Because the
actual five Points refers to an intersection that no longer exists, sure,
because the city hated it so much that they destroyed
the whole intersection and so.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Now only and then they made it a grid.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
There's only two. No, there's no grid down there. It's
still a kind of weird warren. But most of five
Points became the Civic Center and another part became a
park called Columbus Park. But where the actual the five
Points refers to an intersection that had three.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Serrice Park is named after homolone director Chris Columbus.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
That's correct, not after notorious.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Genocidal maniac Christopher. Yeah. Really, so we're.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Recording this actually the weekend of quote unquote Columbus. Stay,
and guys, there are other Italians to celebrate that weren't
world historical pieces of shit Like Christopher Columbus didn't just
start kind of a genocidal wave coming across America. He
was himself a genocidal fucking maniac. And many of the
horrible things that happened as a result of European colonialism

(48:19):
were direct results from things that that guy started way
back in the day. I digressh fuck that move. Yeah.
So that building is built right over this nightmarish tavern
called the Old Brewery. Now. In a book called As
You Pass By, a History of the Volunteer Firefighting Units

(48:41):
that predated the FDNY, Kenneth dunshe described it as quote
the Old Brewery was a five story building, old and dilapidated.
Along one wall and ali led to a single room
in which more than seventy five men and women of
assorted nationalities and races lived together. This was the den
of thieves. The name was appropriate. Along the other wall

(49:02):
ran another filthy lane called murderer's alley worse than the
first upstairs, there were about seventy five other chambers holding
i'm sorry, housing more than a thousand people. The section
was a warren with underground passages and murderous cul de
sacs into which the police dared venture only in large numbers.
For the old Brewery for a period of more than

(49:23):
fifteen years, averaged a murder a night. So I did
a quick little tally of murders in New York City.
So from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, that's a fifteen
year period, New York averaged just over a murder per night.
And so one fucking building in the early eighteen hundreds

(49:43):
averaged more murders than the entire city of New York
with nearly ten million people in it.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Now does fantastic?

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yeah, anyways, that's Dickens went there too and talked about it.
Dickens had to go with a police escort because I
guess he was too fucking famous when he was visiting
New York.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
But read my cereals.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
Yeah, he says to ship fucking poverty porn enthusiast. So okay,
we get we get back to the Also, there's some
really great photos of the old Five Points District by
Jacob Breese, who if you've been to New York, there's

(50:25):
a lot of things called Jacob Breese. This Jacob Breese
that he was a photographer and journalist who chronicled the
poverty in the Lower East Side and the.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Isn't that head in uh the in that British house
Jacob like Jacob Magaree or something like that.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Oh yeah, you're talking about but spelled different because that
guy's got our eyes. The Jacob Riese from New York
was a Danish guy. Our I I s I E.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Okay, yeah, so but that's better.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, he was. He was like a reformer, you know,
there was like a whole like reform movement. In fact,
Jacob Riese is kind of one of the most influential
people into the kind of like mid century housing project.
I guess they call it like towers and lawns, you know,
to kind of like we'll lift these people out of
poverty by putting them in a giant tower block surrounded

(51:19):
by a lawn that they're not allowed to go on
and separated from the rest of the city.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Make sure that ship's fenced off anyways, so uh, back
to the episode.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
I will continue to keep going if you want me to.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
But I feel like we're gonna we got it, we
got ah. I'm kidding, okay. So Live then immediately goes
to see her therapist, who she's seeing now because of
the post traumatic stress from the William Lewis situation. So she,
you know, tells Doc Lenstrom, I'm New York City cop.
I can't go around beating people up. It's sadly it

(52:01):
seems like some of them didn't get that memo. Then
he tells her that she has the tools and tells
other victims what she needs to hear herself right now.
So then then Live Waltz is in and says I'm sorry,
I'm late, and Munch is like you're allowed, and then

(52:23):
Live randomly is just like, please don't say that.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
I get that she doesn't want to be treated like
a victim by you know, her colleagues.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yeah, but it's just why is she so on edge
with Munch specifically because this is like two scenes in
of her dealing with much In both scenes, it's she's
oddly she's being oddly contentious with him.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
Well, because I don't think she respects him that much.
I think that's a problem. I mean, she does know
how rank works, right, Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
And every time Craigan ever got removed from the unit,
it's always because of something that either Sheer Elliott did.
Sour sorry, of course, I mean whenever Manch is in charge,
it's because you fucked up. How bad do you feel
for Tomorrow who's having to pass that awful sketch around
on the street. I know, I know, but he's got
like printouts of this fucking terrible sketch. I mean.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
It looks like I mean, it looks kind of like
the it looks like.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
A serial killer drew it.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
It looks like the Unibomber. But just they'd like filled
in the face of the UNI Bomber, covered by the
mass just with like with like charcoal, right, and they
just like it's otter insanity.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
They blackfaced the Unibomber.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
Fantastic.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I feel like that's an early contender for the Man
of this episode. Okay, so okay, stopping frisk, Well, they're stopping.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
They say that let's two five oh to five oh
or whatever they call it, But that is the New
York Police Department code for stop question and frisk, which
is the very controversial policy of stopping frisk, which, of course,
as people might know if they've heard the news, overwhelmingly
targeted young black and Latino men.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
In New York, so overwhelmingly it's like insulting. It's yeah
and Bloomberg and Kelly, ray Kelly the the It's ray Kelly, right, Yeah,
Bloomberg and ray Kelly, who was the police commissioner then
in Bloomberg was the mayor. They were basically using their

(54:38):
crime stats in this like fucked up circular logic way
that doesn't actually make sense, and you're just like keep
feeding more bullshit into the equation to get your answers.
But they were saying that because because black and Hispanic
offenders were charged more, that they were committing crimes more,

(54:59):
that they should actually be more than they were, which
is what what is later talked about when they're asking
Finn on the stand about about all of bloomberg statements. Yeah,
but it's good. I mean, it's completely insane, and here
we're watching them stop like every fucking black man in
the city.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
I kind of feel like, uh SVU is doing some
blue washing. I don't know if that's a that's a neologism,
but where they're like they're using the stop and frisk
for in their mind, legitimate purposes.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. I absolutely
don't think that's what you.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
Don't think that's what they're doing here.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
No, no, no, I don't think that Light and Company
are trying to paint this in any way that's sympathetic.
I think this is I think it's meant to show
that they're stopping every black man in the city they are,
and that and that they are like straight up just
victimizing people solely because they're black. Like there's a ton
of overreach here, because they meet the veguesst of descriptions

(55:56):
of being youngish black men. Like because even when Live
is on the stand later she sort of like regrets
that they did this. I mean she doesn't out where
i'd say that she regrets it, but like you can
you can tell their pangs of regret and like, oh,
he because he met because he was the description of
a young black man, Like that is that really what

(56:18):
you're asking But that's what's happening, was stopping frisk. But
I think that like the creators, the writers, and this
one's written by Warren Light.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
And Julia Markt, and so you think there I.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Think there's absolutely I don't think there's any any wiggle
room at all about where they're coming down on this.
I don't. I don't think they're justifying stopping frisk at all.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Okay, that's good.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, I don't. I don't think this is I think
this is meant because I mean, Live is Live is
doing multiple things where she's overreaching in this episode, sure,
and I don't think we're meant to believe that this
is good for her now.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
I wish that those fucking comps had started chess compressions
though when they arrived at the scene of Jolene's shooting,
because maybe he would have survived if they had started
administering first aid as soon possibly.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
I mean the other issue is that the I don't
know if you're I don't know how how sound that
is if you've been shot in the fucking chest, which
he has. Yeah, I suppose you're right, you could be
exacerbating things. So I'm not sure. I'm I just I'm
not saying that they shouldn't have, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
What the Yeah, you're right, maybe I don't know they
at this point, they are presumably getting some kind of
first aid training. I think, no, no, this is twenty fifteen. Yeah,
they're not so.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
One of my favorite no first aid training.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
One of my favorite ironies is that they're still shocking
NYPD's cars now. Say their motto is Community Protect Respect.
I don't know, some bullshit like that, but it's CPR,
and it's like they didn't learn CPR all the way
twenty seventeen.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Maybe later. Fucking still, I like when we found.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
That out shocking, I was I'm just draw draw flabbergast.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
I still can't fucking fathom how that's possible anyway, Speaking
of black eyes being victimized as Sybil, sure seems like
she shot an innocent black kid here and then she
you know, jumps to he tried to rape me, And
it is the least sensible explanation for what actually could

(58:27):
have happened. We saw, yeah, given yeah, given what we saw, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
We just saw somebody walking behind her with headphones in,
and she like said something to him. He didn't respond,
and because he can't hear because he's got fucking earbuds in.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
She also and I think this is by design, plays
this a little more coldly than someone who really thought
they were going to get raped.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Yeah, she wasn't like she wasn't like.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Yeah, there wasn't. I mean we saw we saw three
truly traumatized victims, and then we saw her exactly.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Of course they had been literally.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Sure, yes, but if if but I think if she
truly thought that she was going to be raped, like true,
like unequivocally, no no hesitation at.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
All, she wouldn't be lying about what he said to her.
That's for damn.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Sure, yep. And that that lie, of course, only comes
out because she has since seen the reports and it
is catering her story to match those to get her
off and maybe get her off.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
So the carter say he takes the M five bus
line usually sometimes the subway, and the M five is
the bus line he would have taken from the boat basin,
which is at seventy ninth along the Hudson. Of course,
all of these rapes were a long river side drive,
we're told, and that's it goes up river side drive.
So they did their their bus research.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
This while scene where they have to question his parents
is uncomfortable. I mean it's supposed to be, absolutely but yeah,
definitely definitely uncomfortable as Finn and Rollins try to like
walk that fine line where they're trying to get information
but at the same time not trying to be like
cold and sensitive assholes. And then Chema is like, I

(01:00:22):
want that murderous white sheet devil locked up.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
Yeah. Of course. One of the things they have to
do in SVU, right is make make macaud like he's
kind of like the perfect victim right for this, right,
he's a student, you know, and he was really yeah
when you know, often in reality, the media uses kind

(01:00:45):
of minor indiscretions from people's past against.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Them, which they very specifically did with Trayvon Martin exactly.
They used social media posts that was like, I mean, fuck,
go through my social media posts. Yeah, well don't you
don't need to do that people, but go through mind.
I've said plenty of terrible things. When when you used
to have that like naughty or nice uh metric that

(01:01:09):
would pour over your tweets, I was I was ninety
nine percent naughty. And one of the keywords that they
kept using that they kept referencing that I'd used was blumkin'.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Our current secretary of state. That's so nice of you.
For talking about it already.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Yeah, yeah, Secretary Blumpkin. So all right, Benson is really
looking to believe Joline's account here when there's when there's
plenty of initial contrador initial contradictory evidence that only mounts

(01:01:55):
like her post attack bias is definitely working against her here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
I don't know what the time frame is supposed to
be here, but I would imagine the department would recommend
some kind of period of leave after that kind of experience.
But I don't I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Know, but dude, I mean live, wouldn't live? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
I also would have thought that they would have learned
how to do fucking first aid before like twenty eighteen,
but they did not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
So then maccod dies in the hospital and immediately pretty
rough scene, only the way that it can happen in television.
Immediately the real rapist is caught in the act.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
Oh, Rollins receives a phone call. You know what happens
when the phone rings and Rollins is there some.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Oh yeah, and Davis Rolinson. Yeah, so the real rapist,
total piece of.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
Shit, Such a piece of shit, man. I wish we
had more time with him because he was a real
piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, real real piece of shit. He really lands piece
of shit in h in very few lines. Granted the
lines given him were odious, but then like he calls
Live a bitch, I think she.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
And she needs him. Well he's cancuffed, so uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
And then uh, she's kind of she's kind of peak
Amorrow or Stabler here, like she is roughing up purps
and potential perpse in the case of that fucking guy
on the street, like it's her favorite pastime. I feel
like she has really taken back the night.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Was it. Audra McDonald the therapist in the Therapist from
the season, she would recommend that Live take a a
leave of absence for a little while.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Yeah. Yeah, she's really spinning out here. Yeah, and I'm
I'm not saying that she shouldn't be necessarily, I just
don't know that she should be working cases.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
And certainly being kind of like the lead detective. Yeah,
fairly a high profile case as well as a as
a very intensitive one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Yeah, it's kind of funny that the rapist gives up
the thing that links him to the other rapes, the
oil like proffers that right away. He really fucks himself,
So you know, fuck this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Well, they needed they needed to get that exposition jump
out of the way like a SHP because they needed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yeah, because they have way too much other bullshit.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Well, and they have Jeffrey Tambour, and they're like, we
we cast him as a lawyer, so we need to
have a lot of fucking lawyer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Gotta be a lot of Tambour lawyer. So they they
bring in the victims again, the id the guy, Yeah,
please don't think I'm racist? Well, too late, and tomorrow definitely,
you can tell.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Tomorrow, just like staring.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
At her, Yeah, like, are you serious, I can't tell
if you're joking. You know, I think you're racist? Right
then e m s up. Evidence wise, she calls them
the evidence Mangling Service, which is pretty hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
Warner has a really fun scene.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
We could cut this whole Warner scene in because it's
kind of priceless from front to back. She talks about
the stippling and then gives Finn the straight dope on
on Shae.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Jo Lean, you might want to use the restroom.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Oh Jesus Christ, she's fucking racist, man, And I'm not
saying like when I when I I'm I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Here for the racism. Usually on SVU, But she says
a lot of stuff. She says a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
She starts talking about how New York is full of uh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Something, taking the Jungle train through the Longo, and she's
talking about field hands and other things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Man like when they go to her restaurant, was Richard
Spencer eating there? Could you tell? I couldn't tell. You
went to school with it?

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
I did. I went to school with him for one year.
He would have sat next to me an assembly, But
I don't fucking.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Remember, well because he didn't have that you know, white
supremacist haircut.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Yet probably no, Yeah, I do definitely remember some of
the people that were apparently friends with him. But but yeah, yikes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
So, yeah, she is a super racist. She recoils when
Finn goes to recreate the crime and then starts viewing
stuff about Jews and says that she'd be getting a
medal for shooting a black kid were they in the South. Man,
there's so much problematic shit here. It is not comfortable.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
Yeah, to quote Jolene, I wasn't comfortable with her patois,
which I was a little confused because Okay, so she
says I wasn't comfortable with his patwa, but he didn't
speak because he was listening to headphones and didn't hear her. Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Anyway, Oh no, I mean she's completely fabricating everything at
this point. Okay, so I think for the most part,
she does the job well of pulling off odious Southern racist,
but it feels like she's sort of slipping in and
out of her Southern accent here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
I noticed that too, her accent.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
And the weird thing is she's actually from Memphis, you know,
like and from Memphis in the sixties, like she would
presumably have an accent, but like, I don't know, maybe
this is just how she talks and every once in
a while.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Some No, she's definitely hamming up the Southern accent. I
think that she probably, but.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
She's not doing it that much though. It's not like
we're watching Brenda Blevin do whatever the fuck she was
doing or worse because Marcia gay Harden.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
Yeah sure, because I think that Silvil Shepherd actually like
once had that accent and she probably got it coached
out of her when she was yeah, up and coming.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
When she was studying with Stella Adlie.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Yeah, exactly, so she learned how to not speak that way.
But at the same time, it's like it's a lot
when she's going to do one, she's going to have
a lot better accent than fucking Brenda Bleathan will. But yeah,
but yeah, she did kind of fade in and out
a little bit. I mean, I think, yeah, which.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Is there were times where I felt like, okay, she's
just talking like normal simple shepherd here. Yeah, so all right,
I don't know when when jumping ahead to the trial,
because we should just move through this, we have another
anstance where Benson's on the stand and things kind of
fall apart. I don't know that she really had a

(01:08:30):
way around the defensive's line of questioning here, of course
not it wasn't her fault, but she does again put
the case Jeopardy watch, which is kind of like the
go to Oh Benson's on the stand. It feels like
it's always going to go wrong because of this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
Yeah, and I mean not that there the Tambour would
have accepted a plea, but that Barba said, I think
I should oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I forget who
talks him out of it now obviously before well, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
I I don't know that they talk him out of it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
I think, well, he they kind of are talking to
him about it, and they're like, oh, you shouldn't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
They're not they're not pro taking they're not pro plea offer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
Yeah, so right before the trial.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Oh, she also says she has black friends, which obviously
she doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Yeah, well, I mean she has back black friends, but
she pays them and she makes them walk across the
avenue to take a piss in the diner.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
I don't think those are black friends.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
But so before the trial starts, uh, Barba's in his office,
there's a there's a protest going on outside. You know.
Obviously I look at the signs clearly, and so we
had some. It was good good sign work generally. So
we had like Black Lives Matter signs. We had other
ones that had like pictures of both mccaud and Jolene
and they said I am They said child over mccad

(01:09:50):
and child killer over Joline. There's one that said I
am mccad. Professional work. Totally believe those at this sort
of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Then we get one out the one about her Frying.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
There was one that said yet it had like weird verbiage.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Fry.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Fry's definitely like make Joline fry something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
There was another one that said stop children, which was
a little weird. It had like handguns with the like
kind of like cross out handguns, but.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
It just stopped shooting children.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
It said stop children in words, and then it had hands.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
But there's a handgun in there. It's probably stoped shooting children.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
But they could have just put shooting there and it
would have made more sense, because it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
Looks to me like it probably ran out of space.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
It just looks to me like I just said stop children.
And then the last one said guilty of WWB, which
I'm assuming was walking while black, but yeah, I'm not
one hundred percent sure. But then he says, yet he's
on the phone with apparently the district attorney, and he says, yes, sir,
I do know what a long hot summer is. Of course,

(01:10:52):
the long hot summers were in the late nineteen sixties.
The in the summertime, there were a large and often
uncontrolled riots across many cities in the United States, specifically
in sixty eight it was sixty eight, or.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Most specifically sixty eight, but that was the year of
that it like hit its fever.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Yeah, after the assassination of MLK. There was riots in
dozens and dozens of cities.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
But like nineteen Detroit, New York.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
Yeah, the first WATS riot was in nineteen sixty five.
That was kind of the first long hot summer, and
then nineteen sixty seven was Detroit, Newark. But then after
nineteen sixty eight they were all over the place, and
this was like going on until the seventies. And so
he says, yes, sorry, I do know what a long
hot summer is. Of course, we just had a long
hot summer, not this past summer, but in twenty twenty,
because twenty twenty was very analogous to what was going

(01:11:45):
on back then. And of course it wasn't always that
the black folk were rioting and causing lots of destruction,
but that sometimes the other forces were at play. In
twenty twenty, of course, yeah, police were causing a lot
of the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
The people who are supposed to serve and protect were.

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
Often doing the opposite of that. In Joshua's town, they
were driving around in unmarked vans shooting at people without
announcing their presence.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
I mean, not not that there's a to be fair here,
but they were shooting non lethal rounds.

Speaker 4 (01:12:26):
Yeah, well, the bottom enche of a beer bottle is fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
Still, all right, So back to the trial. There is
no fucking way that a high profile lawyer would let
Joelene take the stand of this trial. Absolutely not, Like
the reasonable doubt's been established. Things can only go wrong
from her for or things can only go wrong for
her from here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
And we've already he already knows about this, this like this,
you know, these transcripts of these positions that are fucking
damn yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
Yeah, so if if she opens her mouth in the
wrong fucking way, that you know, her whole history of
discrimination and sealed court documents is fucking up up for discussion,
which in the trial, of.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
Course, she like immediately opens her mouth and it comes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
Up, but only a little bit. Like he really can't
dive in that much. He has to stick to what's
publicly verifiable, like her statement and lib on tomp Yeah,
the the New Orleans lifestyle mag that they created for
the show.

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
I mean, I can't believe that. I can't believe that
a publication would let that fly New Orleans a lifestyle mag.
This isn't It's not like it was some hard hitting
like I don't know, some some some like Rolling Stone
Expose or it's not that it's.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
A lifestyle mag In New Orleans, which is easily the
most liberal like city in the real Old South, despite
having certainly having racial problems, it is definitely not a
place where I would expect to see something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Just shucking anyway. So, Okay, the defense's case basically comes
down to if NYPD's policing methods are racist, and Bloomberg
is a racist as well, then it's okay for his
client to indiscriminately shoot young black men. Well, that is

(01:14:34):
the crux of their case.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
I would like to say that I'm surprised about that, but.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
In the case of this episode, they're not wrong apparently.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
But to quote John Cougar mellen Camp, I mean, ain't
that America man? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't. Listeners, just know that I didn't
make John Cougar mellon Camp get dropped into this episode,
Adam did so blame him.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
So kind of funny that we should mention this. But
John Cougar Mellencamp is the cousin of one of my
friends who lives in New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Shout out, so Tambor plays to like the one white
guy on the jury in the closing statement, and we
are sure to be shown this, and you know that
that motherfucker is clearly at least when in the first poll,
because we know that in the first poll it was split,
but you know he was all out, Yeah, and then

(01:15:31):
convinced everybody else.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
I mean to be fair, the way these fucking castle
laws are written, Yeah, it's it's pretty easy to kill
somebody if you're a white person and you're standing right
next to your house. It's pretty easy to kill somebody
in this country. Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
So Barbara gives us him passion plea in his closing argument,
but it seems obvious that he wasn't going to get
the verdict that he wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:15:58):
To draw some teas in the courtroom though, m h.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Indeed, but she's found not guilty of manslaughter, which is
a pretty low bar to clear. Yeah. I felt that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
I felt like the extras acting in the in the
gallery was kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Because yeah, because it seemed like the extras in the
back like screen left corner, were cheering and should not
have been the people who were cheering exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
Not that we're trying to say, who was that the.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Last shot of the day, that was a Martini shot
for the day, and they're just like, oh, well whatever,
we called Martini, so this is it. That's that's the
shot we're getting. It seems crazy. Maybe maybe they had
maybe they shot alternate They could have shot an alternate
verdicts and just used the wrong footage.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
It's possible. And they didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Seemed like they were cheering, and it was Yeah, it
seemed like there were black people cheering for the verdict
and that should not have happened.

Speaker 3 (01:17:01):
Yeah, at least it didn't seem it didn't seem like
a large number of black people in the courtroom would
have been cheering this verdict.

Speaker 2 (01:17:10):
No, no, all right, So I think we're ready.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
To I think we are too. There's a you know,
there's a little kind of like button thing at the
end where they basically Finn says, that's just the way
it is, and that's where we leave the episode. So
of course, we rank these episodes every week. We ranked
them on a ten point four criteria scale. We are
trying to come up with a comprehensive list of all

(01:17:39):
of the SPUs and where they rank in the Cannon.
So the way we do that is we judge them
on the overall quality of the episode, the guests they
are in, how problematic the episode was, and the depth
and breadth of lives ruined. Now, I think this one
kind of ticks boxes, even though I don't know that

(01:18:01):
it's that great. I don't know. I don't know how
you feel about the overall quality of it, because because
I think I think that any time that we're hitting courtroom,
you know, with like fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
At least, it's Barbara courtroom, it's Barbera courtroom.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
But it's still it's like.

Speaker 4 (01:18:19):
It's not like they stuck it like they did with
Motherly Love, say yeah, where the courtroom is Like whoa,
we didn't get that, and it was kind of sort
of your standard.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
I mean, if I were to give a random SVU fan,
any any of you listeners, if I were to give
you a scenario which laid out what the case was
up to this point, you could all pretty much right
how the courtroom scenes were going to go. Yeah, unless
it was a crazy left turn like in Motherly Love.

Speaker 3 (01:18:53):
Exactly, and there's no there's no left turn here, and
so it's just we're just kind of like playing out
the two arguments that we've already we are understand the
arguments that we've been watching the episode so far, or
if we've been fucking alive in this country. You know,
at least that summer, you know, that was definitely in
the air and certainly is now, and so I think
that's kind of a mark against it. It starts, well,

(01:19:15):
I think it starts, and it's it's fun and you know,
the the live kind of trauma stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
It works, you know, her could Yeah, it's at least
like an interesting thing to have to wallow in.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
What I was thinking is it could have been worse,
and I kind of expected it to be worse when I, uh,
when I was coming into this, because I knew, I
knew that the you know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Yeah, you knew we're still dealing with very fresh wounds,
yeah from that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):
But but I don't, I don't know that it's that great.
It's not fun. Really. It does have big stars in it,
but that's a different category.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
And yeah, I had.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
The feeling that these two big events that the Right
is kind of linked in their minds happened and they
had to make a show an episode about it, and
so they dashed us off, but I don't know that
it's like the strongest work that they've done.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
No, And I think a lot of the times when
you're dealing with these like recent rip from the headlines, yeah,
it's not always executed that well because it's how do
you do that and make it interesting? I think it's
I I'm not necessarily blaming them, and they're dealing with
a formula that they were you know that that at
this point has been established for fifteen years and they've

(01:20:30):
only been doing the show for three or this is
two seasons and two episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
Formula is older than that because like this, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Yeah, the formula goes back to the Law and Order
Ripped from the headlines in nineteen ninety. You know, like
this has been a thing for fucking at this point,
what twenty three, twenty four years.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
I mean, there's like a Richard Brooks episode that's basically
this exact same episode, just without with like it's ripped
from a different headline.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
But it's yeah, it's you know, which is sad because
there's every you know, three months this.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
I think that one might actually been a kind of
tied into the Central Park five, but you know, so
there you have instead of having Finn black Cop kind
of dealing with with this thing that he that he
kind of experiences more deeply than his colleagues do Richard Brooks,
but Black Attorneys is having the same kind of issue there.

(01:21:25):
And as I recall, that's a great episode. I don't
remember the name of it, but it's not bad. But
it's it's not great, and it's I think it's despite
being a real hot button issue and having big stars,
I think it's kind of forgettable. Like, I don't know
that this.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
Sound's going to stick with I'm inclined to say, like
a four.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
I think a four is fine now with guests it's
got Obviously Sybil Shepherd is was a huge star at
various points of her career. Yeah, Like, I mean, Taxi
Driver is iconic and Last Picture Show is Yeah, sure absolutely,
moon By was iconic.

Speaker 2 (01:22:01):
Yeah, I mean the fuck Moonlighting is. I don't even
know if it's streaming anywhere. I don't think it is.
I actually have the first season on DVD. Really wow, Yeah,
I love I fucking love Moonlight. I mean Moonlighting is
so good.

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):
Really took kind of like primetime television to a different
level of oh yeah, for sure, like just kind of
popularity but also kind.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Of super meta, which was not a thing that was
being done then.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
Production qualities were very high in that one. It really
like kind of kicked it up a notch. It was
a I don't remember individual episodes at all, but I
remember like it being kind of an event when I
got to watch one.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Oh for sure. Yeah, you know Bill Irwin's doing the
work here if he's fine, Yeah whatever. Kevin Carroll, Kevin
Carroll an Sonia son A really good or is Tambour Yeah,
I think, I mean, I think this one ends up
doing pretty well in the Guest Star. It's not, but
I'm thinking like a seven.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
I think a seven is about as high because it's
all so it's not like it's not that any of
them are that great, right, Like simple Shepherd is not.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
She's having to be pretty odious.

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
She is, and she's good. She's good at it by
doing it with that kind of like smirk on her
face and it's pretty good. And the way she recoils
when Finn like lightly touches her kind of do it.
And when he touches her, he's not doing it in
a weird way. He's doing it to kind of like exactly,
and she recoils in horror.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
Yeah, yikes.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
And for someone who like that wouldn't be easy for
her given her past as a staunch advocate for civil rights.
So she's she's having to do work that she surely
could not be comfortable.

Speaker 3 (01:23:44):
I mean. And Tambour is very good as the attorney.
I think he's he's like a good foil to Barbara
and so, so he's good.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
It's sort of hard to unpack Tambours. We don't have
where we don't have to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
We don't have to talk too much about tam Or
because he's not the main character, thankfully exactly. But and
I liked a lot of the small parts. I liked
the guy that was going back and forth with Rollins
about his joint rolling skills when they were doing to
stop and frisks. And I liked a few like Willie.
I liked a few of those smaller parts too. Josh

(01:24:20):
was this problematic.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
It was very racist.

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
It was extremely racist.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
We had to watch a lot of the racism.

Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Yeah, yeah, we sure did. It wasn't fun.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
Yeah, I think we're probably looking at another like seven here.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):
I think that's fair because it's it definitely makes you cringe,
but it's not making you cringe.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
In nice now. I don't think in twenty twenty one
you're cringing in a way that's fun. Well, I think
because it's even rare now than it was then.

Speaker 3 (01:25:00):
I think because it's not that the episode is doing
it insensitively but almost because it's not like if it
were a season two episode that was being kind of
racist in a weird way that didn't realize that it
was being racist, it would be more fun to watch

(01:25:21):
than watching like.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
This is very cognizant of exactly, it's very self aware
of what it's portraying, and it's doing it. Yeah, it's
it's it's obviously they're doing it in the professional way
that it's meant to be done.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
Yeah, but it's it's but it's not. It's not as
fun as as some of the other things that we've seen.
It's not as fun as Connor Pollo, Freddie's tree House.
I think it's what it's.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
Called, might be Freddy's Playhouse.

Speaker 3 (01:25:49):
Maybe maybe that's it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:51):
But Freddy's fun House, Fuddy's fun House, Okay, it's I
think it's not as fun as as you know, Finn
and Rollins descending into a bizarre world of no yeah,
strange beauty.

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
Of kinky body modifications. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
Now, and then having Steve from Sex and the City
give a really crazy fucking like pro.

Speaker 3 (01:26:17):
Pro like a non consensual amputation.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
Brand pro voluntary amputation screed.

Speaker 3 (01:26:25):
Oh man, fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
Sorry are you editing that way?

Speaker 3 (01:26:29):
I am, I'm editing it right now. Yeah. Just I'm
just I'm not like, I'm not into the nuts and
bolts of adding in sound clips, but I mean what,
it'll be a lot of fun to add in those
those Steve clips. So Okay, So we said seven unproblematic,
and I think that's fair because it is highly problematic, But.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
It's not that just not necessarily.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
I mean it, it's gonna make you go ay yi,
But the damp and breadth of lives ruined now as
we know, Macaud was literally a choir boy, and his
parents are justifiably completely devastated. The city is on edge,

(01:27:16):
also justifiably because.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):
There are also four rape victims here. We've got the
whole racial injustice of the trial not playing out the
way that would have served justice.

Speaker 3 (01:27:29):
And also like it seems to me like Joline's just
going to go back like not, She's not going to
get canceled the way Paulatine was, and people are going
to continue going to her fucking bullshit racist like like
it's just chicken parlor.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
Yeah, it's going to feed into Charlottesville, or you know.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
It's just a it's a chicken on restaurant, is what
it is? Fried chicken on Sonya son, And what's the
name Carol? They Kevin Carroll. God, they look devastated in
that courtroom, and it's it's hard to it's hard to
not rank this very highly because of that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
Well, I mean, you know, Finn's obviously dealing with.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
Finn is devastated because Live starts the episode with her
life basically being flushed down the toilet.

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
Yeah, and it's not really in a better place at
the end of the episode.

Speaker 3 (01:28:25):
No, she's been humiliated in court and she's brutalized two
people who one of them might have deserved it, but
certainly not.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Not the guy on the street, not from she knows that,
but yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:38):
Not from her, not while using handcuffs.

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
So I think we're maybe looking at another seven here. Yeah,
I mean, I don't want to go too much higher
than that, just because.

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
It's only one body and there's no like.

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
It's one one body. I mean again, they're they're what
I believe we're at four rape victims or three.

Speaker 3 (01:28:55):
There's four, well three is three plus in progress, so
we don't really know. We don't know the details of that,
so we don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
So it's not like there aren't victims.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
They're definitely victims.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
How heavily to weigh the maybe it's an eight because
of the race stuff, I.

Speaker 3 (01:29:15):
Think it's I think it's got to be it. I mean,
like the city is like about to explode, and here
we are in twenty twenty one, and it's not like
that shit got any better in New York. It got
a lot worse last year. So yep, So that gives
us an overall six point five.

Speaker 2 (01:29:34):
It's probably a little higher than it should be, but yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:29:38):
Mean it takes a lot of it's six boxes. Again,
you might be able to hear it in the tone
of voice talking about this one, it's like, we don't
want to give this one a particularly high score because
it's enough that fun, but it does do the things
and it's definitely problematic. So it is so six point
five ties it with the Barry Bostwick episode we watched recently. No, No,

(01:30:01):
that's which one was that. No, that was way back
in the day, So that was Death or Christian Entertainment.
That was season eight, episode twenty one. Pretend that was
episode fourteen of munch moin Benson And also with episode
sixty four that was Parole Violations sixteen seventeen. That looks

(01:30:22):
like he came straight from his job as a future
cop at the Bondage Club and just behind military justice.
So yeah, it's there. It's definitely doing its thing, and
it has you know, it undeniably has big stars, so
it's kind of hard like big stars have to kind

(01:30:45):
of be doing shitty things in the episode, has to
be bad for them not to tick that guest box
and simple Shepherd's pretty damn goodn't it. Yeah, So, Josh,
I think we can roll the next one and hopefully
we get back to that run of really good episodes
that we've been having because we had.

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
We were Yeah, we've had a real, like real serious
stroke of luck here.

Speaker 3 (01:31:09):
Yeah, well, we kind of had a downturn over the
last few but before that we were really doing well.
Undercover mother Oh it rerolled. Oh no, now we're just
thinking about Undercover mother No.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
I was looking back at the ones we've just done. Yeah,
I mean like Motherly Love and Strange Beauty.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
I just like Strange Beauty was amazing, man.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
And what a pleasant surprise that was.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
I wasn't expecting that at all. Uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
Anyway, so we're going over to episode dot lo o L,
which was built for this podcast by a friend of
the pod flats firing up, spinning the tape bill and
ted to do not like this one bit.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
Napoleon is eating a giant bowl of ice cream.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
And we've got season four, episode fifteen Pandora.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
Interesting. We have not done an early episode in as
long as I can remember.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
It's kind of wild, yeah, and so is this episode.
A body found in a car opens up an investigation
into a worldwide child pornography ring, which takes Stabler halfway
around the world. So this is where he goes to
the Czech Republic.

Speaker 3 (01:32:35):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
This one features Pam Grier as assistant US attorney Claudia Williams,
reprising her role from the Disappearing Acts, which we covered
back in episode sixty six. Two pages about Golden Showers.
So she's in this. We've also got Alexis Zana who

(01:32:57):
she wasn't broken Flowers if you remember, and it's we've
got Dagmara Dimitic, who is the weird third dimentiic sister
that we've had in an episode here.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
Very strange. Yeah, scanning the rest of them, I don't
really recognize anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
Recognize it, but you never know.

Speaker 3 (01:33:17):
William McNamara probably.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
Trying to see if anyone else there is recognizable. They're not.

Speaker 3 (01:33:23):
Really.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
I feel like I should. I really feel like I
should know who William Mcnamerica, and I do not.

Speaker 3 (01:33:28):
I mean, he was not the Secretary of Defense uh
in under Lid Johnson, not that war criminal. But yeah, guys,
I think with that Wow, look I look at these cards, man,
I'm gonna have to a little bit of over hell
a little over.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
Ten cards and they go to to police, all right.
They also got to cup appropriate.

Speaker 3 (01:33:58):
Hopefully that's the same print shop we went to in
that one episode.

Speaker 2 (01:34:00):
That one was Quick. It was spelled it had quick
in the name and quick spelled in a weird way.

Speaker 3 (01:34:08):
That was the That was the Stephen Ray episode. If
I am not mistaken, yep, it was. Yeah, Well I think, guys,
it's time to you know, do that thing we always
tell you to do, rate and review the episode seriously. Yeah,
it really helps us a lot. You can also follow
us on social We have social places that we would

(01:34:29):
have social considering that we are middle aged men. Yeah,
we're not on TikTok.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
We're still begrudgingly on the other things. I mean, I
really wish that I could just that we could put
this out and people would listen and I didn't have
to do anything on social media.

Speaker 3 (01:34:48):
It's not how the world works, apparently.

Speaker 2 (01:34:50):
That is. Yeah, that is not how the world works.
So we are on Twitter, we are on Instagram, we
are on Facebook as much of my Benson. We're on Reddit.
We have a subreddit my Benson again, you know our
slash launch my Benson. We have a website, munch my
Benson dot com. We have an email address that you
could send emails to lunch my Benson at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
There's a theme here. If if you're on a website
and you can put in munch by Benson, chances are
you going to find this indeed. But guys, I think
with that it's time to keep on munching. We'll see
you next week.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
Munch, Everyone's Benson.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
M m no, but I think we're looking at a cereal,

(01:36:48):
same memo, same bourbiage. We need a scheduletist down here.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
Now now, No, we've already spent enough overtime on those
missing girls.

Speaker 3 (01:36:57):
We'll do the first thing in the morning. Get some rest,
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