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" If your significant other loves True Blood and you do not, there is no need to panic. Your predilection for Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Stanley Cup is built upon classical television armaments that are revered by millions. Your significant other, let&amp;#039;s face it, is into crap. You are a man of unimpeachable taste (or so you tell yourself), while your significant other (or &amp;quot;S.O.&amp;quot;) continuously exhibits a shocking boorishness that smacks of Anne Frank liking Leni Riefenstahl films. So you have every right to hate what your S.O. is into. (Which is crap.) Right now your S.O. is going haywire for tonight&amp;#039;s sixth season premiere of HBO&amp;#039;s True Blood, \u2014 the same night as the penultimate episode of the highly revered Mad Men. Let this be a guide for you to get through it.  True Blood is a despicable show that consistently defies logic, even for a fantasy. Spare no opportunity to point this out. Also, if you have to watch it, you are going to need copious amounts of alcohol. Mad Men cocktails would be a stellar FU to watching this dreck, but anything will do. Red wine would be an appropriate pairing, but throwing bottles of Saint-\u00C9milion across the room every time you find yourself incensed can be dangerous. Stick to cans of beer. True Blood is basically Bram Stoker&amp;#039;s Dukes of Hazard, but set in Louisiana. Shirtless idiots and chicks in cutoffs run around and get into scrapes that are easily overcome with whatever deus ex machina is fashionable that week. People die constantly, shot or eviscerated, and no one cares. NO ONE CARES. It&amp;#039;s one of the most consistently violent programs on television but because it&amp;#039;s on HBO, it&amp;#039;s somehow revolutionary. If your S.O. thinks the Bruins/Blackhawks games are too brutal, be sure to point this out.  It&amp;#039;s supposedly about vampires who walk among us. That was the basic premise when it began: an excellent idea quickly abandoned to showcase buff werewolves and castoffs from some EBT Ren Faire. You have to point out its flaws or you&amp;#039;ll get an ulcer and die. Primal screaming is the only way to get through any episode. Nothing makes any sense and the sooner you confront this, the better you will feel and (hopefully) your S.O. will admit defeat and you can watch Mad Men reruns. The show buries itself in metaphors to appear meaningful but it&amp;#039;s merely the porn version of Falcon Crest. One allegory is the way homosexuals are regarded in America. Be quick to point out that this Hollywood redneck flash mob for cat ladies is a jeremiad about segregation in an alternate universe where everyone is fine with vampires walking around staring and looking intense but the concept of gay marriage is completely avoided. Oh sure, there&amp;#039;s plenty of gays around just to keep viewers salivating, but it never addresses same-sex couples getting hitched because that would be too &amp;quot;out there&amp;quot; in a land where Maenads are perfectly believable. Your S.O. will say, &amp;quot;but it&amp;#039;s a fantasy,&amp;quot; but this fantasy has no problem name-checking the Iraq War and Osama bin Laden. At which point it&amp;#039;s acceptable to throw beers cans at the flat screen. There is no shortage of gratuitous nudity on this show. Everyone is in terrific shape in a town with no gym. All people do is drink and fight. If that were a recipe for fitness the entire male population of Boston would have been extras in Magic Mike. And no one works on this show! The vampires are all one percenters, apparently. The only restaurant in town is run by a shape-shifter who spends more time fighting wolves and panthers than dealing with vendors, and the staff at this joint is always getting loaded and yelling at customers. In the era of cell phones and Yelp, this place would be shut down faster than a New Orleans hooker on Dollar Day in July.  This show is racist as all hell. It&amp;#039;s in Louisiana where 32 percent of the population is African-American, but there are only two black people. Simply unbelievable and not cool. And not only that, but with every other female getting naked on this show, the sole black female \u2014 who is hotter than hell \u2014 never gets to take off her clothes. Way to go, Hollywood. Ask your S.O. about that. No one dies on this show. Ever. All of the principal cast that started in season one are still hanging around, shoring up their Roth IRAs and putting new Spanish tiles on their roofs. The cool special guest stars that appear (Stephen Root, Michelle Forbes, Denis O&amp;#039;Hare, Fiona Shaw, Christopher Meloni) only show up to die so it&amp;#039;s constantly anti-climatic from the word go.  The music on this show sucks, and there are never any allusions to Zydeco, Cajun/Creole, blues, or jazz. It&amp;#039;s completely unfathomable that any town in Louisiana, especially after the heartbreaking devastation of Hurricane Katrina, wouldn&amp;#039;t occasionally show some local pride, and it&amp;#039;s completely shameful that this show doesn&amp;#039;t show at least a little respect. Ask your S.O. how they feel about that and gloat.  If you haven&amp;#039;t killed a sixpack or your liver at this point, and self-immolation is not for you, there is always the option of canceling your cable subscription. The only problem with this is no Mad Men, no Walking Dead, and no Breaking Bad. Your best bet is to suffer through it and hope the neighbors don&amp;#039;t call the cops when you start screaming your head off that Rutger Hauer is going to be on season six, which sucks because he was awesome in Blade Runner and The Hitcher, and he always dies. Unlike this show. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/how-to/a23079/hate-watch-true-blood/>