Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is typically filled with intense lines of dialogue in each episode, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get a little silly now and then. 

When Mariska Hargitay (Olivia Benson) was recalling famous throwback lines from the show with Variety, she read a particular bit from Season 12, Episode 5 (“Wet”).

“I’m not the one who stabbed the captain with a pickle!” Hargitay said the line in question with a laugh.

She then explained the context of the scene. “Somebody slipped [Benson] mushrooms, and I had to do an interrogation scene, and I had to deliver this line as serious as I could, and I remember feeling I earned my money that day.”

Meanwhile, her pal Christopher Meloni (Elliot Stabler) doesn’t seem to want Hargitay to forget the absurd moment.

“Only certain kinds of people bring up that line with me. Mostly my co-star Chris Meloni who likes do go down memory lane,” Hargitay said with a chuckle.

Photo: Getty Images

Christopher Meloni’s heartfelt shoutout to Mariska Hargitay

While Meloni and Hargitay like to poke fun at each other, they are also great admirers of each other as well. When Hargitay was honored with a Glamour Woman of the Year Award in 2021, Meloni gave the most touching speech about Hargitay’s accomplishments.

“I have been trusted with one task tonight: introduce someone who needs no introduction, who I’ve been working with for 13 years and been friends with for 22,” Meloni began. “She’s got great energy, great personality. So tonight, I say this: Radiant. Charming. Funny. Generous. Elegant. Bawdy. Honest. Appreciative. Inclusive. Direct. Vivacious. That’s my favorite word; it comes from Latin, to live. Which is what she does with great passion, every day, with everyone that she engages, be they friends, family, strangers, or commitments.”

He continued, “She’s fearless, without the bravado of the warrior stance, but always with the open arms, the open heart. She’s a connector of people because she knows we’re all better when we’re working together. She is as comfortable in the sacred as she is in the profane; she is a soul in the constant search of the beauty and the truth that she knows that this world holds, but she also knows that it requires vigilance, persistence, and insistence to pry magic from the oftentimes mundane reality. Her first instance is to always react with compassion and empathy. She sees hope in the hopeless; she sees the potential in the you, and me, and us.”