I can already hear the rustling of jimmies campus wide at the mere mention of the greatest food microwaved this side of the Mississippi. Well, I’m going to ask you to stop digging through the gardening tools that have collected dust proportional to your lawn’s collection of weeds to find your pitchforks.

In fact, this, the Applebee’s defense, can be applied to a multitude of things you love to hate, namely bad movies. It’s all a matter of perspective, you can’t expect something to be more than it is. I’m asking you to look at Applebee’s in a different light: the dim, florescent light of a bar.

See, the problem with Applebee’s isn’t actually the food, but rather what people expect the food to be. They’ve done a great job at branding themselves as a restaurant, but they’re a restaurant like I’m a daycare provider. And like a child’s broken bones, their reputation is stronger in the end.

Despite how they are viewed, however, the fact of the matter is that they are a bar. They show whatever is even vaguely sports related and serve s—y bar food.

As long as you keep this in mind and stick to the bar section of the menu, you’re fine. You want a burger? How about a chicken tender basket? Low self-esteem? Applebee’s is the place for you.

Your steak was well done when you wanted medium? Well that sucks, but it’s not really that surprising. You were feeling seafood, but now you’re feeling the ceramic of the dirty toilet you’ve been stationed at for an hour? If you order salmon from a bar that’s your own damn fault.

Now that I have irrefutably proven my point, let’s expand the idea. The summer blockbuster action movie comes out, but unfortunately Bourne speaks about twelve lines in between killing enough thugs to start a small town. You walk out the theater feeling satisfied, but almost immediately hear people calling it utter trash. Well the days of live and let live are over friend. Walk over there, politely introduce yourself, tell them where you’re from, play two truths and a lie, maybe hand out some business cards, then get in their stupid, ugly faces.

Implement the Applebee’s defense! You don’t go to an action movie for the plot. You go there because you’re an American with stifled anger and a romanticized view of violence (welcome to the club). Next you’re gonna start watching porn and complain that paradigm of being both a mother and a naughty girl makes her a questionable parent and less endearing as a character.

So next time you’re going out to eat, maybe you shouldn’t go to Applebee’s if you don’t want bar food. Perhaps you judge a movie less harshly, even if it wasn’t your cup of tea. How about you just stop getting mad about stuff that doesn’t matter? That’s my job.