The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, December 11, 2018 — 5

At the very least, “Bad Blood” 
lives up to its name: It’s bad 
and there’s blood. Other than 
that, there isn’t much nice to 
say about the stale six-episode 
mafia docudrama making its 
international debut on Netflix 
after a premiere on Canada’s 
Citytv last year.

It’s limply acted, turgidly 
written and plotted in such a 
way that the season feels much, 
much longer than it is. In some 
stretches, “Bad Blood” is so 
painfully boring, you’ll wish you 
were sleeping with the fishes. It 
doesn’t help that we’ve seen this 
type of story told a million times 
before, to much better success.
“Bad Blood” does begin with 
an interesting hook: It’s telling 
a true story, one of Montreal’s 
notorious Rizzuto crime family, 
which oversaw a vast criminal 
empire from the port city for 
decades. 
A 
flashy 
opening 
sequence introduces us to Vito 
Rizzuto 
(Anthony 
LaPaglia, 
“Without a Trace”), who takes 
over for his father as mob boss 
and 
successfully 
unites 
the 
city’s warring syndicates. We’re 
also treated to a little cameo 
from Cheryl Blossom’s maple-

syrup-mogul-turned-Canadian-
heroin-smuggler dad. (Joke.)
Vito’s 
son, 
Nicolo 
Jr. 
(Brett Donahue, “The Other 
Kingdom”) is clean-cut and 
independently successful with 
no interest in the mob business. 
So naturally, when Vito is sent 
to prison, Nicolo is — gasp! — 
roped into the mob business. 
The exception to otherwise 
uninspiring 
performances 
is 
the excellent Kim Coates (“Sons 
of Anarchy”) as Declan, Vito’s 
capable if ruthless right-hand 
man, who keeps the Rizzuto 
operation running when Nicolo 
Jr. proves inept.
Oh, and there are also some 
women characters. In a big win 
for diversity, the female roles 
on “Bad Blood” range from 
stripper to mistress to backup 
mistress to shrill politician. It’s 
not quite clear whether these 
lovely, leggy ladies have inner 
lives or distinguishing traits. But 
who needs those when a made 
man makes you his woman? At 
one point, Vito’s two paramours 
fistfight in a department store, 
a failure of the Bechdel test so 
spectacular it makes “The Wolf 
of Wall Street” look like it was 
directed by Betty Friedan.
Sure, this genre has never 
been 
especially 
friendly 
to 
women. But even the stingiest 
analysis of Carmela Soprano 
or Kay Adams would find them 
lightyears 
more 
progressive 
than the women of “Bad Blood” 
— if for no other reason than that 
they have names.
Is it really fair to compare 

“Bad Blood” to “The Sopranos” 
and 
“The 
Godfather,” 
two 
universally-adored, 
zeitgeisty pieces of gangster 
entertainment? 
Maybe 
not, 
but that’s the tricky fate of 
any 
on-screen 
depiction 
of 
mobster life. “Bad Blood” very 
badly wants to say something 
interesting about family and 
difficult decisions. But in the 
process, it forgets that prestige 
TV, in addition to the nudity and 
violence, also needs to be good. 
The closer resemblance here is 
to “House of Cards,” another 
show cloaked in enough neo-noir 
and masculine energy to dupe an 
audience into believing that its 
hokey truisms about power are 
actually profound.
The 
explicit 
cultural 
connections 
“Bad 
Blood” 
is inviting aren’t doing the 
show many favors either. That 
writer-producers Simon Barry 
(“Continuum”) 
and 
Michael 
Konyves (“Barney’s Version”) 
have 
described 
this 
as 
a 
“Shakespearean-level 
revenge 
tale” betrays an almost laughable 
inexperience with the Bard’s 
work. If only there were some 
hugely renowned Shakespeare 
festival in Canada where they 
could discover just how far off 
that comparison is.
Canada, 
you 
may 
have 
universal health care, the better 
side of Niagara Falls and Kawhi 
Leonard. But when it comes to 
the gangster genre, we’ve got you 
squarely beat. It’s not personal, 
it’s strictly business. So let’s just 
call it even, eh?

Watching ‘Bad Blood’ is 
an offer you should refuse

MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

“Bad Blood”

Season 1

Netflix

TV REVIEW

I didn’t think I would ever be 
able to write a Books that Built 
Us column. I read a lot, but my 
memory of anything beyond my 
freshman year of high school is 
spotty at best. I have plenty of 
favorite books from my childhood, 
most of which proved formative 
enough to warrant me writing a 
column like this. But, alas, I’d have 
to reread each of those books, 
cover to cover, to understand 
what about them made them 
great. And even then, I’d never 
fully remember the ways in which 
those books impacted me; I’d only 
remember that the impact they 
carried was profound.
But then I read “Becoming,” 
the recently released memoir 
by 
Michelle 
Obama, 
and 
I 
realized that I’m not finished 
building myself. According to 
Michelle, even her identity has 
yet to completely round out. 
Call it corny, call it meta, but 
“Becoming” is a book about 
building ourselves; it built me 
by proving that this journey 
never stops. Like Michelle, I’ll 
spend my entire life constructing 
the woman I want to become, 
creating change on a scale that’s 
even a morsel of what my Forever 
FLOTUS has managed to enact. 
The opportunity for lifelong 
growth is a beautiful thing, and 

I was too caught up in my insular 
college bubble to notice that until 
now.
“Becoming” is divided into 
three sections. In “Becoming 
Me,” Michelle takes us from her 

early childhood on Chicago’s 
South Side through her tenure 
at high-power Chicago law firm 
Sidley Austin. In “Becoming 

Us” she explains how a former 
mentee, named Barack, became 
her partner in life and, eventually, 
the 44th President of the United 
States. Finally, in “Becoming 
More,” Michelle details how she, 
her husband and their daughters 
Malia 
and 
Sasha 
navigated 
eight years in the White House, 
holding themselves to standards 
infinitely more stringent than 
those of former First Families, 
whose everyday actions weren’t 
seen as representing an entire 
racial group. The life of Michelle, 
a working-class Robinson turned 
world-leader 
Obama, 
clearly 
hasn’t been an easy one, but she 
makes it known that it’s been 
fulfilling in ways she never 
imagined.
The book is peppered with 
gloriously 
honest 
anecdotes 
that 
transform 
Mrs. 
Obama 
from an almost otherworldly 
superwoman into a real-world 
role model, one who struggles to 
balance the needs of a country 
with the needs of her family and 
who embarrasses her kids on a 
regular basis. She recalls Malia’s 
prom night (then 16 years old, 
she asked her mom to “Just be 
cool please”) with the same level 
of detail as her feelings toward 
Donald Trump (spoiler: She’s not 
fond of him). Michelle’s choice to 
take equal care when discussing 
candid 
family 
moments 
and 
global politics speaks volumes. 
This, I thought while reading, is a 

In ‘Becoming,’ Michelle 
Obama is transformative

TESS GARCIA
Daily Style Editor

BOOKS THAT BUILT US 

woman who has her priorities in 
line.
I now see a little piece of 
Michelle Obama within myself, 
and lately, that has been enough 
to lift me out of my most insecure 
moments. I watch my talented 
friends secure internships at 
Fortune 
500 
companies 
as 
my email inbox runs dry, and 
instead of moping, I remind 
myself 
that 
Michelle 
was 
waitlisted at Harvard Law, a fact 
I hadn’t known before reading 
“Becoming.” 
When 
I 
catch 
myself getting frustrated with 
an unexpected shift in routine, 

I remember her resilience as 
her husband’s political career 
uprooted the life she’d built in 
Chicago, catapulting herself and 
her daughters across the country 
into a world of opulence and 
cynicism unlike anything they’d 
ever seen.
We’re 
all 
building 
and 
building ourselves. As Michelle 
conveys through “Becoming”’s 
melancholy epilogue, that process 
is full of ups and downs. At some 
point, each of us will see our 
hard work upended by our own 
personal Trump administration. 
It’s inevitable, but it’s up to us to 

decide how we respond. We can 
lose hope and retreat, or we can 
be like Michelle. “In my most 
worried moments, I take a breath 
and remind myself of the dignity 
and decency I’ve seen in people 
throughout my life, the many 
obstacles that have already been 
overcome,” she writes, adding: 
“I hope others will do the same.” 
Consider this column my answer 
to that call. I will continue to 
struggle against my personal 
evils, but I will continue to build 
myself. No matter what comes my 
way, I’ll be like Michelle and I’ll 
never stop becoming.

LET’S MOVE!

The book is 

peppered with 

gloriously honest 

anecdotes that 

transform 

Mrs. Obama 

from an almost 

otherworldly 

superwoman into 

a real-world role 

model

Each year, I wait until the week 
prior to Thanksgiving to begin 
listening to Christmas music. I 
know that I won’t feel guilty for 
listening too early, and the delay 
of gratification is not deleterious 
to my experience of the holiday 
season. This year, a month before 

my season-opening date, Eric 
Clapton released his first-ever 
Christmas album, Happy Xmas, 
on Oct. 12.
We last heard from Clapton 
with his 2016 return to the 
country-blues arena with I Still 
Do, which received poor ratings 
from a number of publications 
as it failed to serve as a return to 
the 73-year-old guitarist’s “glory 
days.”
Clapton’s 
release 
of 
a 
Christmas album was a bit 
unexpected. 
Clapton 
has 
been relatively silent since a 
disappointing 2016, so the fact 
that his next attempt at a “return” 
would be through a Christmas 
album is, for his critics and 
listeners, out of left field.
Nonetheless, Clapton is a 
connoisseur of the blues, and 
I was interested to see what 
his take on a Christmas album 
would be. In short, Clapton 
combines 
Christmas 
classics 
with lesser-known Christmas-
themed titles to compile a set of 
covers that (mechanically) work. 
Essentially, Happy Xmas is not 
going to drive Clapton back to 
the center of popular music, but 
it contains the pillars of Clapton’s 
craft — masterful blues guitar, 
soothing vocals and an absence 

of much editing — that make for 
a functional Eric Clapton album.
Each 
track 
from 
Happy 
Xmas is a cover, similar to the 
construction 
of 
the 
classic 
Christmas albums from Bing 
Crosby, 
Frank 
Sinatra, 
Ella 
Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and 
so 
forth. 
However, 
Clapton 
intentionally 
included 
some 
lesser-known Christmas songs, 
such as “For Love on a Christmas 
Day,” and covers of Christmas 
pieces from Slade. As such, 
Clapton’s 
Christmas 
album 
covers a spectrum of sorts — he 
covers the classics while dusting 
off Christmas pieces from the 
bottom shelf.
Clapton covers this spectrum 
while 
maintaining 
a 
blues/
country 
atmosphere 
to 
his 
renditions — except for one house 
rendition of “Jingle Bells” that 
would throw the uneducated 
listener off. “Jingle Bells” is 
situated between “Home for the 
Holidays” and “Christmas in My 
Hometown,” both of which are 
the more bluesy tracks on the 
album. “Jingle Bells,” however, 
is a house/EDM track — unheard 
of from an artist like Clapton. 
According to Clapton, the track 
serves to pay tribute to the late 
Avicii, with whom Clapton had 
worked on spotted occasions. 
Clapton’s 
outrageous 
venture 
from his typical low-key style 
will no doubt come as a surprise 
to most. In fact, when I first 
listened to the album, not only 
was I thrown off by the venture 
into EDM, but I was disappointed 
to be hearing EDM while I 
was trying to listen to a blues 
Christmas album. That said, 
upon my research of the album, I 
was glad to discover that “Jingle 
Bells” is not Clapton’s attempt to 
get into the house/EDM game 
and rather a tribute to one of the 
genre’s greats.
Clapton’s Christmas album 
feels like a reflection on what 
is important to him, musically 
and personally. In an interview 

released on Clapton’s YouTube 
channel upon the album’s release, 
he said that the album “has 
taken a lifetime of Christmas 
experience and (listening to) 
Christmas music.” It is not 
difficult to feel that “lifetime of 
Christmas experience” baked 
into the Happy Xmas album.

The mistake that Clapton’s 
critics make, in 2016 with I 
Still Do and likely in 2018 with 
Happy Xmas, is the erroneous 
assumption 
that 
Clapton 
is 
trying to get back to his “glory 
days” or back into the popular 
music arena.
With no slight to the legendary 
musician, both I Still Do and 
Happy Xmas are examples of 
Clapton’s new career outlook: 
Clapton is making music for 
himself and his team, and 
whether his listeners enjoy the 
music is not his top concern.
The album’s cover art was 
done 
by 
Clapton 
himself, 
mimicking Bob Dylan’s artistry 
for Music from Big Pink. Clapton’s 
rough illustration of Santa Claus 
on a white background sets the 
tone for the album. The rough-
around-the-edges 
(literally) 
album art further symbolizes the 
notion that Clapton’s new music 
is homemade, made for himself, 
made for the joy that is making 
music, occasionally made for his 
long-standing fans.

Eric Clapton’s homemade 
festive Christmas album 

ZACHARY M.S. WAARALA
Daily Arts Writer

ALBUM REVIEW

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Happy Xmas

Eric Clapton

Bushbranch/
Surfdog

Happy Xmas is 

not going to drive 

Clapton back 

to the center of 

popular music