Did You Know?: Chris Meloni doesn’t know how to read. Each SVU script is adapted into pictogram form for the actor.

For those of us who came of age in the 90s (despite my looking like a baby, I’m in my late 20s), Melissa Joan Hart was a conundrum, puberty-wise. She had two iconic roles for people who don’t know what the word ‘iconic’ means, Clarissa in Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Since her heyday she’s made some interesting choices, like Republicanism and retiring to a tepid existence on Melissa & Joey, a show that’s run for approximately 9 seasons yet it’s impossible to find someone who’d confess to being a fan, even in an enhanced interrogation situation. So as Buzzfeed has stated in their many journalistic epistles, you’re definitely a 90s kid if the logline “Melissa Joan Hart gets raped by the kid from Veronica Mars (the show is like The Adventures of Pete & Pete except for all the ways it’s not)” piques your interest. “Compulsive” combines the ever scintillating teacher sex scandal issue (it’s a conquest if a female teacher has sex with a male student, am I right? Up top!) and the sex addiction issue that David Duchovny’s life will never not highlight and creates 40 plus minutes of stupid, ridiculous bullshit. Melissa Joan Hart’s done worse, like Drive Me Crazy. One wonders how Vincent Chase got Queens Boulevard after that disaster.

We begin with the revelation that Kyle Gallner was raped by his teacher, while Melissa Joan Hart contends he raped her. It’s the classic dilemma that was originally settled by cutting the rape in half, but more progressive times call for more progressive storytelling. SVU finds out about the sex because Gallner tested positive for gonorrhea, and thanks to Seinfeld I can never think of that STD without the line “I gave you gonorrhea because I thought you’d have fun with it” echoing through my head. The kid’s parents are real entitled pieces of shit, telling Casey Novak that if she doesn’t arrest Melissa Joan Hart within three days they’re going to go to the media. I like Diane Neal, but her character’s kinda all over the place, especially in her final full season, Season 9. The district attorney’s office is successfully bullied by this ultimatum and duly arrest her while she’s in an office that turns out to be DUN DUN DUN an abortion clinic. If you want to play a special drinking game for this episode, take a shot every time Melissa Joan Hart says some derivation of “don’t tell my husband”. You won’t die, like in the infamous SVU righteous indignation game, but you’ll get pretty lit. She cares more about her husband finding out about things than the abortion or the arrest or fainting and requiring hospitalization. It makes a lot more sense when we meet him, one of my more hated one-off SVU characters, which says a lot considering I hate pretty much all of them.

…is nowhere to be seen because he knows better.

This guy, let’s call him Steve because I don’t feel like looking up dipshit #44’s actual name in the credits, has two things going for him: he’s a firefighter and he’s Catholic. The former means he has the monkey strength to punch Stabler in the face and the latter ensures his reaction to finding his wife in the hospital, fresh off a wild night with the vacuum cleaner, is not one of compassion but instead “YOU FUCKING MURDERED A BABY YOU BITCH!” who doesn’t give a shit she was raped. I kinda wished he ended up like Tommy’s nephew on Rescue Me at this point. Surprisingly, Stabler lets him off with a Catholic-to-Catholic, which shows the fraternity between the FDNY and NYPD. Were he a Hispanic longshoreman and he not only took a swing but connected with Stabler’s face, guy would be in the fucking morgue and Chris Meloni would be out scowling IAB sergeant Robert John Burke. The abortion, combined with a pointless cutting and suicide attempt backstory, immediately tilts Melissa Joan Hart into “sympathetic” territory. “Impulsive” may the only time in fiction where a sexual situation between a Catholic and an underage boy puts the underage boy at fault. Pope Francis (aka the cool pope because he’s not a former Hitler Youth, only an innocent Argentinian clone of some old guard Nazi Mengele poured into his Creepy Crawlers oven) and this episode of SVU, the Vatican’s getting rehabilitated!

Clarissa Explains The 50 Shades of Grey

Now “Impulsive” revolves around Kyle Gallner’s attorney’s defense that he is a sex addict. I don’t know if this is ripped from the headlines, I’d have to check my David Duchovny scrapbook, but the attorney makes a big production out of it, including getting Dr. Gay to testify that Kyle Gallner’s genes are all fucked up and even ladies in swimsuits cause his neurons to go from House of D to Red Shoe Diaries in less than a second. This may be a controversial point of view, but I think Melissa Joan Hart was asking for it. She kept her bedroom window open so any fucking dude with a ladder could guitar twang his way in there. Nevertheless, the courtroom scene made me realize Casey Novak’s strategy to win at trial is to be ADA Stabler. She basically just yells at Kyle Gallner in the hopes that it’ll convince the jury to determine him guilty. Taken as a whole, the ninth season is one long fuck you to Diane Neal and her character, as she’s made to look ineffectual, incompetent and gets raked over the coals for mistakes and lapses in judgment that happen to Benson and Stabler approximately 45 times per episode. Finding Kyle Gallner wants to reform, Catholic/Teacher/Saint Among Saints Melissa Joan Hart implores the DA’s office to let him plead to something whatever the fuck that puts him in a private facility for juvenile sex offenders that, provided he undergoes treatment, means his record will be expunged and he won’t be on a registry his whole life. A decent enough ending to the episode, power of forgiveness, I guess Prozac really can stop the desire to force oneself on women. Oh, there’s another fucking 10 minutes left? Terrific.

I was alone in my apartment while I watched this, but the Heroes bus ad nonetheless elicited a loud, sharp “HA!“.

If there’s one lesson Dick Wolf seeks to teach you in his television empire, it’s to never trust anything for any reason at any time. In a fit of karmic justice, the first night Gallner spends in juvenile detention he’s brutally raped. Arm’s in a cast, makeup overdid the ketchup blood. “How could you let them do this to me?” he whines to no one in particular. Novak and the defense attorney (Annie Potts, giving by far the best performance in “Impulsive” as well as being one of my favorite recurring attorneys) each feel a bit guilty, the former especially. Much like superhero comics questioning the formula of superhero comics, Casey doesn’t do herself any favors by throwing herself into an existential funk about what happens to the people she prosecutes after sentencing. Don’t think like that, because SVU doesn’t really do week to week character development so you won’t give a shit in any other episode. You’re also not written by David Simon, so you don’t have the time or the competence to ponder these things. In case the show didn’t shit on Diane Neal enough, Benson dresses her down for grabbing the shitty private facility head schlub’s shirt in the view of the police. She treats the matter as though Casey has a chance of going down for assault. Of course later Olivia brushes it off by saying she had Stabler talk to the guy and intimidate him into rethinking filing anything. I take this as a subtle (well, not real people subtle, subtle for this piece of shit show) message from Benson to Novak amounting to “hey, beating people and threatening them into silence is OUR gig, stick with your law talkin’ bullshit and let us do our jackbooting for ourselves”.

I believe in rape terms this is a “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.

Due to aforementioned lack of subtlety, the Kastner Center features more rapes in a week than Oz does in a season. Guards, personnel, inmates, whatever, it’s a fucking orgy according to the witnesses Novak and Annie Potts round up. This is classic SVU; instead of making an institution like this private facility somewhat corrupt it becomes the Arkham Asylum of rape. Unreported rapes! Kids blowing each other! The adults turn a blind eye or participate! It’s so over the top it becomes comedic, like George Sr.’s description in prison to the Startled Straight group in Arrested Development. It’s why I keep on expecting a press release from Dick Wolf one of these days that admits he’s a provocateur comedian on par with Andy Kaufman. How can this shit not be an elaborate goof? Taking this whole disgusting enterprise straight is too terrifying to contemplate; I’d have to go Event Horizon on myself. Anyway, the cops find out that besides the Grade A schlub administrator the center’s staff belongs in Batman’s rogues gallery. There’s assault charges, car theft and so on in their jackets. The only clean guy is Pete Lincoln, a former cop from Florida who also did a similar job in a sex offender correctional facility there. In – and I know what I’m saying here when I say this – the most preposterous twist of “Impulsive”, Pete Lincoln is actually a diddler who stole the guy’s identity and got hired at the Kastner Center. Look, you’ve already got rape. Sex addiction. Kyle Gallner photoshopping Melissa Joan Hart’s head on (I’m sorry) much younger, much more attractive women’s bodies. Kyle Gallner affording multiple prostitutes several times. Broken brain defense of rape. Tossing off identity theft of a decorated former police officer like it ain’t no thang broke the camel’s back. Give the guy access to the Infinity Gauntlet, why the fuck not! It’s not like SVU would be a worse weekly marketing loss leader for the Marvel Cinematic Petrochemical Universe than fucking Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

He wouldn’t have been caught if he didn’t look the most sex offender-y possible for the ID badge shoot.

Ugh, better wrap this stupid horseshit up. The cops find the fake Pete Lincoln is the real Earl Romaine, veteran of the boy raping trade, and confront him. More specifically, Ice-T confronts him so Earl can utter the line “you got a problem with me, spook, bring it!”, to which Ice-T’s new partner Chester Lake (more on him later) adds the witty rejoinder “that’s Detective Spook to you!”. If Ice-T is in a scene, the chances of a tossed off racial slur increases 300%. Earl tries to cheese it, but thankfully Stabler is in the vicinity to club him in the face with a drawer he took off a dresser that someone threw out for some reason. See, this is what I’m talking about when I say the show’s mission statement for the season is shitting on Diane Neal. She’s browbeat for grabbing a schlub, Meloni smashes a guy in the face with wood unnecessarily. He’s not armed. He’s not an imminent threat. Stabler pulls a Vic Mackey without understanding audiences aren’t fucking supposed to like Vic Mackey! Viewers are supposed to find Vic’s methods problematic and disquieting! What the fuck is this horseshit?

“The Kastner Center board decided to terminate your employment! Get it, board? Oh…you’re bleeding from your brain. Whatever!”

Look! Look at that bullshit that makes for a decent action moment but actively harms the program the more the viewer thinks about it within the context of the episode and the series. Boy, good thing the show relies on people not thinking. Earl waives his right to a lawyer and says he couldn’t help raping Kyle Gallner, even though he received treatment for his urges at a similar facility. He figures he’s just wired wrong, and in case you don’t fucking get it yet, “like that kid I raped”. How about instead of polluting the airwaves you just fucking mail a Jack Chick tract about what the hell we’re supposed to glean from this garbage, Dick Wolf? That’s not the worst bit, though. Steve asks if it’s true the now-shuttled Kastner Center (its closure is narrated with Diane Neal doing her best Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries impression) is offering Gallner a million so he doesn’t sue. Annie Potts confirms. I wrote this down, because I didn’t want to fuck up the wording, Steve responds “that kid rapes my wife and he gets a million dollars, what does Sarah get?”. Yeah, why the FUCK doesn’t every rape victim get a gravy train! THE SITUATION OF AN UNDERAGE BOY RAPING HIS TEACHER IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS A PRIVATE ENTITY CREATING A LAX ENVIRONMENT THAT ALLOWED FOR INSTITUTIONALIZED SEXUAL ASSAULT! Stick to fighting fires, dipshit. You’re probably only good at that because your creator taught you early on that “FIRE BAD!”.

This is the first Season 9 episode I’ve done for this column and therefore I ought to provide something of an explanation for one season wonder Adam Beach and his character Chester Lake. At a certain point SVU decided to indicate they didn’t want to be in the Belz biz as passive-aggressively as possible and tried to give Ice-T a new partner. Chester Lake is Native American, Mohawk specifically, and as for the rest of the character…eh, whatever. That’s enough characterization for the writers. Whereas I believe Munch in the last 6 years of his tenure was written into the scripts as “Richard Belzer says something that justifies his paycheck but doesn’t impact the plot necessarily”, Lake is the designated bringer of new ideas to the stodgy, cob-webbed precinct. In a wonderfully preposterous detour into stupidity where Melissa Joan Hart’s attorney convinces a judge the cops had no right to the cooler full of abortion because of her religious beliefs, Lake pipes in that the Mohawks believe in spiritual balance, so it is possible Sabrina the Not-Teenage Abortionist wanted to bury the medical gunk in accordance with that. I didn’t think we still did the “we redskins are different from you white men” thing in 2007, but forget it, it’s Dick Wolf town. Adam Beach is a pretty good actor I think, but he’s given nothing to work with in this season so it’s not a surprise he’s written out in a moronic hatchet job that wishes it could be blamed on the Writers Strike. In the season he functions as Munch, only replace conspiracy theories with Native American information learned from a placemat at a Kansas City Chiefs game.

I want him to play Vulture in Sony’s Sinister Six: Amazing Spider-Man 3: We’re Holding Onto These Film Rights For Dear Life.

“Impulsive” is one of the better examples of a “think about it” SVU episode I’ve covered in this column. A “think about it” episode is one which raises a lot of issues without ever actually throwing any insight into the mix. SVU rarely has to say anything about anything, and when they do they don’t know what to actually say, hence “think about it” (stoner-esque “, mannn….” not required but appreciated). In “Impulsive”, the fetal alcohol syndrome afflicted meerkats that comprise the SVU writing staff asks us to consider the existence of sex addiction, whether or not compulsions disarm us of responsibility for our own behavior, and then nothing. The ending in which the diddler says he’s wired bad and couldn’t help himself like Kyle Gallner could’ve been replaced by a tight closeup on Chris Meloni’s face, a fart noise and a slide whistle and nothing would’ve been lost. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but this isn’t intelligent television or even normal intelligence television. At best, this piece of shit gets you to get up out of your recliner and say “SOMEBODY OUGHTA DO SOMETHING!”. It doesn’t matter who’s defined as the “somebody”, what’s the “something”, as long as there’s self-righteous discomfort Special Victims Unit has done its fucking job. I really wish Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart foundation, which is dedicated to helping abused women, could dissociate itself from this stupid gibberish because it’s a damn shame something that legitimately desires to improve the lives of the less fortunate and the ignored in society is hitched to a weekly vomitorium of gibberish and idiocy. Mariska, maybe Joyful Heart can do its most good by getting this thoughtless horseshit rife with misinformation, exaggeration and idiocy shown the fucking hook.