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Benson & Stabler Playing a Swingers Couple on SVU Is Pretty Steamy

This was a wild episode of Law & Order: SVU!

By Chris Phelan

Today, we're taking a look back at a wild scene from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit's Season 12 episode "Bombshell" that sees Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) posing as a married couple who goes undercover to infiltrate a swingers club. It's pretty steamy.  

How to Watch

Watch the Season 26 premiere of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Thursday, October 3 at 9/8c on NBC.

Watch, below:

Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay's rock-solid friendship

Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay on Law and Order

Hargitay and Meloni formed their famously strong friendship early in their SVU tenure. In the 2009 book The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion, Meloni revealed that before filming even began, he knew Hargitay was the perfect person for the role of Benson.

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"I just knew that Mariska was going to be 'The One,'" Meloni explained, per TODAY. "I was in the middle of telling her this story, this joke. So we got up on the stage, and I'm like, 'Hold on just a second, I'm going to finish telling this story.' Not being disrespectful, but this is important too. This may change my life, but the story is that funny. And I think that put us at ease, and unconsciously there was a connection you could see: That she was now my partner."

Meloni has continued to gush about Hargitay at every turn, and it's a testament to their rock-solid off-camera friendship

RELATED: Mariska Hargitay Reunited with Kelli Giddish for a Cause Benson & Rollins Would Love

"We just pick it up right where we left off and we've said it's like we don't have this relationship with anyone else… it's unique, it's full of laughter, she's full of love," he said in a 2020 interview with ET. "We just kind of fall seamlessly into that place every time we see each other."

"I think Chris and I, Benson and Stabler, at the end of the day, it's all the same," Hargitay told Vanity Fair. "In the relationship, whether it was acting or being partners, there was a level of trust. If I had, like, six dots and this was him and this was me, and then you connect the dots, they connected in so many ways: acting partners, friends, comedians, people that hold each other accountable. We almost had our own language. I mean, here we were for these 12 years, and we spent more time with each other than our spouses. All day we were making this thing together, all day long that we built together, that we created together."