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Above: Not a portrayal of well-rounded individuals.

Why It Falls Flat:

Because, as has been pointed out before, the vampire-haters are actually kind of right.

The show's vampires reveal their existence to humans because the new blood substitute allows them to live without drinking human juice. This is very nice of them, but it means if you're a vampire who was alive before the fake blood came out, you've spent years hunting down and eating people like they were sentient hamburgers. Doesn't "hundreds of years of murder" deserve some sort of punishment? Now consider this: Modern society's default form of punishment -- sending people to jail -- hinges on the fact that you're taking away a chunk of their limited lifespan. But since vampires are immortal, they can go back to their youthful sexy-times as soon as their time in vampire jail is over. Jail just doesn't work for vampires, any more than garlic-and-holy-water-based torture would work on humans. So it's reasonable to figure that if a vampire has killed a human, the death penalty is the only really just punishment.

HBO

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I fucking told you so, bitches.

OK, so maybe killing off all those sexy vampires still sounds extreme. But even so, it makes sense to approach vampires with a Vatican-sized portion of wariness (and maybe a shotgun full of silver and rock salt; come on people, they're vampires). These creatures have a centuries-old cultural tradition of viewing humans as walking groceries. They can roofie people with their minds. Consuming their bodily fluids turns characters into sex-crazed lunatics quicker than the imagination of a fan-fiction writer. So what is this show saying about gay people, exactly?