TVSquad

"You always made me feel safe, John."

Perfect. Beautiful. That line was delivered by Carol Kane to Richard Belzer on last night's season finale of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A bit of history. Kane played Gwen Munch, the conspiracy-minded ex-wife of Belzer's Detective John Munch. The last time the two of them played those roles was more than a decade ago, not even on the same show.

When last Detective Munch fans saw the pairing, it was in 1997 on Homicide: Life on the Street. And they picked one hell of an episode to bring her back. Fans of Belzer know he was having fun with the black helicopter crowd before he brought that particular obsession to his character, and last night's episode was tailor-made for him, even if he wasn't really in the forefront of the plot.

Kane and Belzer only had a couple of scenes together, but they were priceless. The former Mrs. Munch just happened to know a particularly slippery murderer with a penchant for tinfoil hats, and offered him help when he was on the run, unfortunately, on a public Web site. Munch, of course, recognized the screen name and knew where to find her.

I am trying not to give away too much for those of you who have the episode on DVR, but to me, both of Kane and Belzer's scenes were laugh-out-loud funny. Kane plays the unstable role so well, and it just feeds into Belzer's natural cool, made that much more rich with the knowledge that he is knee-deep in the nutty stuff. And the fact that none of Munch's fellow officers blink when he says he knows where to find someone on a conspiracy Web site bulletin board.

Overall, a well-paced, well-written episode, and a whole lot of creepy fun.

See also Bob Sassone's open thread on the episode.