Each Wednesday, I find myself tweeting the sentence “Tonight’s #SVU explores every parent’s worst nightmare.” I’ve gotta hand it to the writers: it really is a skill, coming up with something more disturbing every week. The nightmare on tonight’s episode, “Vanity’s Bonfire,” posed questions ranging from deep to deeply titillating. What will a mother do to protect her child – even if the child is a killer? What will a father do to prevent his mistress from leaking their sex tapes? And how much of a bonus does NYPD have to pay the detective tasked with photographing dad’s erect penis?

Recap: A young couple watches their two-year-old daughter, Tessa, frolic in a Brooklyn playground. While Dad is distracted with texting, someone snatches Tessa! The panicked parents run through the playground screaming her name, in a scene that easily makes the list of Every Mother’s Top 10 Worst Nightmares.

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There’s no new SVU tonight, but this should help tide you over:  John Mulaney giving a very funny SVU reality check.

Have a great week!  See you 11/14 for “Vanity’s Fire.”

There are lots of SVU drinking games, but the most potent for tonight’s episode would involve drinking every time new technology was mentioned. Malware, darknets, onion protocols … you’d soon be drunk as those frat boys in the first scene. “Friending Emily” took every parent’s worst fears about modern technology and crammed them into one terrifying and overblown story about online evils, kidnapping, and child pornography.

Recap: Two cute sisters are on a high school trip to New York. Looking for fun, they accept an email invitation from Wendi, a cool older girl at their hotel, and end up going to a raging frat party. 15-year-old Taylor ends up having an illegal, but on-the-scale-of-SVU not terribly disturbing liaison with a 21-year-old frat boy. But 14-year-old Emily befriends a mild thirtysomething named Peter who spikes her drink and stuffs her into the trunk of his car, which she captures on her cell phone video. [Drink.]

The SVU detectives talk to the frat boys and learn Peter is an older brother from a western chapter of Tau Omega. Great lead! So we’ll call Tau Omega’s national office and find out who he is, right? No. We’ve got an hour to kill here, people. Instead, we’ll follow Emily down a rabbit hole of online horrors.

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Only SVU could celebrate its 300th episode with a gut-wrenching story about child abduction and pedophilia. “Manhattan Vigil” showcased the dramatic chops that have made SVU a TV staple for the last fourteen years. I teared up – twice.  But, in the end, I was left wondering about a question unrelated to the plot. What moisturizer does Mariska Hargitay use? The woman looks better now than she did thirteen years ago.

Recap: The episode opens with a real estate mogul taking his seven-year-old kid, Wyatt, to a baseball game. While Dad and boy are on a subway platform, a man grabs Wyatt and forces him onto a train, leaving panicked Dad on the platform as the train speeds off with his son.

Olivia and Munch feel a sense of deja vu – this is the same neighborhood where another seven-year-old boy, Hector, was kidnaped thirteen years ago. There follow a series of flashbacks in which we see our detectives ruminating about Hector’s case back in Season One.

(And – wow! – I was heartened. Munch looks far better as a silver-haired sage than he did as a gangly young man. And Mariska has aged like fine wine. SVU creators, take note. You might try a product tie-in: SVU anti-aging cream.)

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What’s more disturbing: sex slavery or international terrorism? SVU tackled the question with its trademark mix of ripped-from-the-headlines issues, hairpin plot turns, and girls in skimpy dresses. “Acceptable Loss” was an intense episode, lightened by Ice-T’s one-liners and Cragen’s self-deprecating orange-jumpsuit jokes.

Recap:

The episode opens with a garbage truck crashing into a Town Car, where a businessman and a prostitute are doing what businessmen and prostitutes do in the back of Town Cars. The SVU detectives are called to the scene after a paramedic notices that the girl has a bar code tattooed on her neck. “She’s someone’s property,” Olivia surmises.

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Bondage, sadomasochism, and . . . book signings?  Cross America’s favorite TV crime drama with America’s best-selling BDSM novel, and you’ve got one seriously kinky SVU episode.  I was bound by every minute of it (so to speak).

Recap:  Is there anyone in America who hasn’t read Fifty Shades of Grey yet?  It’s a romantic novel featuring whips, restraints, and assorted sadomasochistic hijinks.  Even my 96-year-old grandmother has read it (shudder), so I’m going to assume we’re all on the same page here.

Tonight’s SVU episode centered on a loosely-veiled version of the book (Twenty-Five Acts), and opened with the author, a curvy blonde named Jocelyn, appearing on a TV show to promote her bestseller.  She flirts with Cain, the charming TV host, and says that women really want to be dominated.  After the show wraps, Joceyln and Cain go for drinks. Jocelyn soon shimmies out of her silky green panties, slips them to Cain under the table, and coos, “What’s your fantasy?”

They rush back to Cain’s bachelor pad and the usual passion ensues.  But then Cain slaps her!  And she likes it.  He gets her on all fours on the bed and spanks her with a  belt.  “Ouch,” she says.  “That hurt!”

Uh oh.  What’s the safe word?  Apparently, in their rush to get the party started, they failed to establish one.  Cain now wraps the belt around Jocelyn’s neck and pulls tight.  Her eyes bug out in terror as he chokes and sodomizes her.

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