A Maryland businessman, athletic coach and PTA member was arrested this week on sickening charges related to a 12-year-old girl—charges that reportedly only came about because the alleged victim watched an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with her mother.

Alec Baldwin said, "Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible," in his New York magazine cover story/temper tantrum last month. How fitting, then, that he guested as a shitty journalist/shittier person on last night's episode of Law & Order: SVU. Baldwin played Jimmy MacArthur, a self-obsessed journalist whose poor reporting fucked up the rape case central in the episode. It wasn't until he quit his job that his miserable character had any chance at happiness (see clip above).

The ripped-from-the-headlines plot of last night's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was inspired by Chris Brown's 2009 assault of his on-again-off-again girlfriend Rihanna. Disingenuously, the episode opened with a disclaimer: "The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event." Perhaps this is the disclaimer for every episode of this godawful show, but it was particularly untrue last night as the show went on to reference Chris Brown's apology video, Chris Brown's bowtie, Chris Brown's dick pic, Chris Brown's duet(s) with Rihanna, Rihanna's request to relax the restraining order she was granted, the leaked picture of Rihanna's battered face, Chris Brown's tattoo that kind of resembles Rihanna's battered face and Chris Brown and Rihanna's voluminous social-media interactions. Look at all of those coincidences and marvel at their hilariously incompetent executions.

The fall premiere of beloved rape variety hour Law & Order: SVU will be based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's hotel maid rape case, TV Guide reports.

For the second time, a movie adaptation of the classic book serial has fallen apart. Also today: Law & Order rips from a new headline, Helen Mirren pinch hits, and some exciting Game of Thrones news.

If you were channel-surfing around the time this episode aired last night, you might have been confused if you landed on NBC around 10pm. What's with all that blood? Did Kelly Bensimon finally lose her mind and kill Bethenny Frankel?

["Law & Order: SVU" cop Det. Elliot Stabler (Chris Meloni) knows that in the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially entertaining. Photo via Splash]

That's what the movies would have us believe, anyway. Also today: HBO goes on a comedy-ordering bonanza, Terra Nova is not on terra firma, neither is Law & Order, and a new reality show actually sounds... good?

Embarrassed because you ate a whole cake and then murdered someone while on a bizarro Ambien sleepwalking binge? Well, blush no more. At least you don't have sleep sex! A new study sheds some light on a troubling phenomenon: Sexsomnia.

[Sharon Stone filming "Law & Order: SVU" (the besssst one) with Marisol Hartigan; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Well, now that NBC has traveled a few months back in time and given Leno the "Tonight Show" back, they've wasted no time in filling his crucial 10 pm spot: Look forward to Jerry Seinfeld, "Law & Order," and "Parenthood."

Tionna Smalls is back! Such good news. Also: Law & Order: SVU will keep solving sex crimes, Amy Adams will embarrass herself, and strange casting good make for good television.

Two Elisabeths get cast in movies, a playwright and a theater actress walk into a pitch meeting with HBO... Law & Order: Sex Police will continue on in its sexy way.

There's been no new news out of cagey superflack Leslie Sloane Zelnick about Mariska Hargitay's hospitalization for a collapsed lung, but her Law & Order: SVU costar Richard Belzer is finally speaking out.

According to Access Hollywood, Mariska Hargitay has been hospitalized with a collapsed lung. A Defamer tipster who works on the set of Hargitay's Law & Order: SVU says there's more to the story.