Recapping the highs and lows of a never-done-before virtual Follies
It’s been hard to get a sense of events happening at the University of Toronto Zoom School of Law. Coming straight to the Toronto lockdown from the Aussie outback, I hardly noticed any difference in social isolation. And in the midst of the Canadian winter, when restaurants and non-essential stores were shut down and cold wind blew through the empty streets, it felt like the city had gone into hibernation. Fortunately, the Law Follies 2021 provided a glimpse of what other students have been up to beyond their Zoom appearances.
The popular annual show has been a place where students relentlessly roast the deans, make wry comments about the school and the law, and mourn the foregone non-BigLaw dreams. This year, these rituals took on a pandemic spin. Instead of watching the show on stage from far away amidst a drunken mob followed by a pub crawl, students could enjoy the show from “a prime location” — in the comfort of their home. They could even go to bed earlier! Getting drunk was still allowed, of course, and encouraged. For people like me who have difficulty telling what actors were doing while sitting in a theatre, being in the front row certainly added a lot to my enjoyment of the show.
Zoom was certainly the centerpiece of Law Follies this year. The show was filled with references to the goods and bads about online learning: jumping straight from bed to Zoom, wearing loungewear to class, employing cheeky virtual backgrounds, using loud mics that tore people’s eardrums, going to the bathroom during class, and of course, guessing what your classmates were doing on their sides of the screen.
There were a lot of fun moments watching these all too familiar, slightly embarrassing bits and pieces of life re-enacted in a playful way.
As usual, this year’s show was full of law students’ jokes. In the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) sketch, a judge’s exclamation “We are not here to get active!” spoke to both issues of judicial activism and the sedentary lifestyles of many practicing lawyers. I think the best part was the “line drawing exercise” that ended up as an unrecognizable mess on the whiteboard, reflective of the common law.
The song parody, “A little bit Lexis,” was ridiculously funny, and in my opinion, LexisNexis should pay the Follies team for making an insanely catchy clip. I’m not sure about others, but my brain was replaying “Quick-law-law-law-law-law-law” even a few days after. There were also parodies about weak papers, selling out to Bay Street, the fox hunter, and the overly inquisitive Laskin statue. My neighbours would not understand what I was laughing at, and I thank them for not complaining about me being a nuisance.
As a 1L who has attended law school mostly online, I’m not familiar with the origin stories of cold pizza, croissants, and runs around Queen’s Park. Yet, it was obvious that quite a few mean jokes were thrown at our faculty members and former Dean. This year’s roasting seemed to be on the harsh end, and I found the bald cap (for former Dean Iacabucci), the grey wig (for Assistant Dean Sara Faherty), and the household insect (“House Roach”) awkwardly comical.
On the other hand, some members of the faculty delivered some stunning performances. Dean Brunnée made her Follies debut as the cute and clumsy green Deanosaur who tried to talk about international law in a comedy show. Professor Philip’s latest hit “I’m My Own Trustee” brought out all the confusion I experienced in my property law class, leaving me to wonder how on earth this would be possible. Finally, I was lost for words when seeing Professor Niblett’s luscious looks and accent on the screen, apart from asking: did they use a colour saturation filter, or is that really how blue his eyes are?
I haven’t been to a live Follies show, but I suppose the online format has its own perks. It also worked out quite well this year, and I liked the multiple layering of shots to mimic a theatre play. The details in the scenes and the variations of camera angles added a lot to the humour, and the screen was plainly a better medium than the stage for the hosts, Aaqib and Saqib Mahmood (4L JD/MBA), to pull off their amazing magic tricks. I imagine it was also a challenging and time-consuming project, but in my opinion, they totally nailed it.
Nice job, Follies team. I was in need of some good laughs, so thank you for bringing them to me.
