Who Should Play Martin Shkreli On Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?

Yesterday's news of the arrest of the notorious pharmaceutical price-gouger Martin Shkreli for (allegedly) running a Ponzi scheme certainly sent thousands of Twitter users to their phones to write schadenfreudey tweets...but it probably also sent the producers of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to their keyboards to rough out a "ripped from the headlines" take on the case. Obviously, the production has yet to announce an episode based on Shkreli's situation, but it seems a safe bet that there will be one. This story's got everything: not just a shameless, money-grubbing prick, but one who's grubbing that money by swindling sick people, and then spending it on obscenely overpriced bullshit, and then pulling a Madoff to maintain his lifestyle. Just for SVU, it's even got a quasi-sexual element, in that the drug whose price Shkreli inflated is prescribed to people with AIDS. But perhaps it will be decided in the writers' room that the AIDS drug angle isn't quite enough to fit the show's mandate and that a fictionalized Shkreli must be even more despicable and depraved. If SVU constructs an episode around a fictional pharmaceutical profiteer willing to express his total lack of empathy or humanity in public, at every opportunity, while twirling his invisible moustache, then such a person might, in private, run into problems when the sex worker he pays to, I don't know, dress like a harlequin and feed him dog food seeks vengeance by diming him out after he writes her a bad cheque.

There's no question that an SVU inspired by Shkreli's (alleged) criminal activity and objectively obvious loathsomeness would work. The only question is: who would be its very special guest star? Perhaps one of these fellows would fit the bill.

Emile Hirsch

Best Known For? Playing the pinko protagonist of Into The Wild.

Previous L&O experience? This would be his début.

Creep Credentials? He's always given me the skeeves for reasons I couldn't really put my finger on, so while the report this summer that he'd pled guilty to choking a film executive was horrible, I didn't mind having my prejudices confirmed.

Zach Gilford

Best Known For? Playing a sweetheart among sweethearts on Friday Night Lights.

Previous L&O experience? The 2005 SVU episode "Contagious," in which (spoiler alert) he turns out to have molested a then-pre-tween Jennette McCurdy.

Creep Credentials? Gilford played a guy pretty much entrapped into mayhem in The Purge: Anarchy, but other than that, he's mostly been Saracen-ing around since FNL. Maybe he'd enjoy making a return to his pervert roots for a change.

Kieran Culkin

Best Known For? Being a Culkin, really; he (arguably) has yet to find a single role you could use to define him if you drew his name in a round of Celebrity. (Note to self: don't put "Kieran Culkin" in the bowl in Celebrity.)

Previous L&O experience? None, but his brother Rory did an SVU in 2003, so he could probably offer some tips.

Creep Credentials? If you saw him playing coked-out gangster Rye Gerhardt this season on Fargo, you know he's already more than capable of pulling off a Shkrelian grease mop.

Patrick Fugit

Best Known For? His feature début in Almost Famous.

Previous L&O experience? Remarkably: none.

Creep Credentials? He's more frequently played broken birds in films like Thanks For Sharing and Wristcutters: A Love Story, but his particular brand of watchful stillness could probably be tweaked pretty easily into reptilian torpor.

Michael Pitt

Best Known For? Boardwalk Empire -- or, if you're of a certain age, Dawson's Creek.

Previous L&O experience? A sociopath in a 2002 SVU in an animal-activism-themed episode called "Prodigy."

Creep Credentials? Well, on the Creek he was supposed to be a sweet younger kid with a puppyish crush on Jen, but he still came across like a refugee from the Trenchcoat Mafia. Not for nothing was he later cast as Mason Verger on Hannibal -- and not much later un-cast in the role, something that keeps happening to him and sure suggests he's a creep offscreen as well.

Adam DeVine

Best Known For? More people have seen the Pitch Perfect movies than Workaholics, probably.

Previous L&O experience? Negatory.

Creep Credentials? His Pitch Perfect character definitely was. And he'd bring to the role a certain fratty assitude that would really serve the role.

Justin Chatwin

Best Known For? Shameless.

Previous L&O experience? Nerp.

Creep Credentials? He played criminals on both Shameless and in an arc this most recent season of Orphan Black, but he'd have to turn off his natural charm to play the kind so deep-down-in-the-soul hideous that he'd risk being torn apart on the street by an angry mob.

Jason Dohring

Best Known For? Logan Echolls on Veronica Mars and in the 2014 feature film.

Previous L&O experience? He has not had the pleasure.

Creep Credentials? He had to be convincing imbuing Logan with some dark qualities for his candidacy as a murder suspect to have worked in the Mars movie. Also: he's a Scientologist in real life. If you don't know why that makes him creepy, watch Going Clear immediately.

Scott Disick

Best Known For? Fathering some children with newly ex-girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian.

Previous L&O experience? None on the show, but he has had run-ins with the non-italicized Law before.

Creep Credentials? ...Seriously?