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We Ranked Every Episode of “Law & Order: SVU” and Got Halfway Through Season Two Before We Lost the Will to Live

“Law & Order: SVU” spans so many hours of content, that watching it and ranking all of its episodes would take months, if not years. But we’re not afraid to feed the internet’s ravenous desire for numbered lists. Gird your noggins, Stabler enablers, we’re about to go for a very dark dive.

  1. Nocturne: Season 1, Episode 21. This episode really pushes all the buttons, including molestation, intergenerational trauma, and piano lessons.
  2. Confession: Season 2, Episode 1. Yes, I googled “Clockwork Orange eye holder thingy price” while watching it, because we all need a little help getting through the work day. But much like its first victim, this episode is on fire. Powerful people get their comeuppance, with classic Benson and Stabler along the way.
  3. Manhunt: Season 2, Episode 18. To be completely transparent, I didn’t watch this episode. What’s the point? Do you realize how many terrible things happen to human beings? Also, what’s the deal with all these child actors? Are their parents protecting them from the show’s sewage-steeped content? Some of them are pretty young! Maybe SVU should do an episode about a child star who later commits murder because when they were young they were traumatized by acting in an episode of “Law & Order: SVU.”

You know, it’s pretty unreasonable to expect me to rank these episodes. There are more than 300 assault-drenched hours of TV here, and it’s hard to watch more than a dozen a day now that I need sixteen hours of sleep a night for some reason. Not to mention the three boxes of Kraft mac and cheese that is suddenly the only thing my corroded guts will tolerate. Yesterday I peed neon orange, and it was so thick my toilet clogged.

Do you think SVU has an intern whose job it is to google “sex crimes”? Maybe they don’t even get called an intern. Maybe their business cards say “Sex Crime Googler,” and their floor is littered with tiny pieces of ripped headlines that they no longer have the will to vacuum away.

Maybe I’ll just read recaps of the other 20 seasons.

Hmm, for some reason all the recappers stopped after season 2.