‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 15, episode 5 review: Was Munch’s retirement cut too short?

There was a good mystery at the heart of tonight’s “Law & Order: SVU” episode, but at the same time, there was also a question as to whether or not the real story that we were excited to see lasted long enough.

After fifteen years on the show, Richard Belzer’s character of Sergeant Munch retired from his formal position, even though he will still make some more appearances on the show. Couldn’t we have something that lasted for a larger percentage of the episode? There were some moments of laughter, but there was hardly as much of a retrospective as what we were looking forward to seeing. When we talked to Danny Pino about this earlier this week, he was at least spot-on in saying that you were going to see quite a bit of good stuff when it comes to humor.

As for the main mystery, what made this largely compelling was that it was a story about a woman being raped twice, but under circumstances so mysterious that she was started to lose her mind under it. This sent us to hipster parties, where the show’s ultimate Hamptons do-gooder ended up being a serial rapist. He was a guy who acted like a savior, but was really just doing everything that he could to take advantage of women whenever he could. This was in some ways vintage “SVU” in that it was not a likely suspect since he already had everything in the world, and really did not need to be a despicable human being.

In the end, this case was closed, and the story that could carry through long-term is the idea of Olivia becoming  Sergeant Benson in the future. While she says that she is not ready for a desk just yet, this could be the clear path towards the eventual end of the series. For as much as we wanted more Munch, this was at least a solid way to cap a fairly strong hour of television. Grade: B

What did you think about tonight’s episode? Be sure to share your thoughts below.

Photo: NBC