A final review from UV’s resident Follies commentator, circa 2021
- It’s Follies season again—spring is vaguely in the air, and so are the spectres of final exams and papers… Of course, here at U of T Law, having fun while you can before nosediving into the misery of finals has been a long-standing tradition.
- Just like Follies 2021 and 2022 (which I previously reviewed for Ultra Vires), Follies 2023 comes in a pre-recorded film format. Many moons ago, Follies used to be a live show on stage, but perhaps the film format is here to stay. According to a video YouTube decided to recommend to many people some weeks ago, people are increasingly reliant on subtitles when watching shows. Besides, a film format allows many more subtle jokes to be planted (for example, those awkward autocomplete suggestions in Outlook and “fake ACORN” on a miserable all-LP transcript).
- Another advantage of the film format that really stood out in this year’s Follies is how the camera moved. The camera comically zoomed in and out and bounced sideways as if saying “nope,” bringing the sketches to life.
- The Follies production team invested in some fancy new microphones! We witnessed the brutally honest hosts, Alex Rego (3L) and Meaza Dante (3L), canvassing the law school and polling students’ opinions on Follies with a perfectly yellow banana, a crisp cucumber, a fresh crown of broccoli, and a big fat sweet potato. Needless to say, with the exorbitant price of produce nowadays, the sound quality was top-notch.
- What is Law Follies about, anyway? It is about the nerve-wracking, mildly-annoying, sometimes-draining experiences as law students exaggerated to the extreme and flipped into things that we can all have a good laugh at. Each year brings a new crew, but the following are destined to stay: LPs, HHs, the all-too-familiar Outlook interface, keeners with endless hypotheticals, PFOs, an overload of readings, sleep deprivation, $$$$$$ on Bay Street, and of course, frustrations with law school admin.
- Some skits are again presented as pop song parodies, although in my opinion, the past years’ renditions were more memorable. I did notice the desperate progression from “give me an H” to “give me a P” and the devotedly worshipped Big Law shrines (kudos to the cameraperson again) in this year’s musical sketches, though.
- In my opinion, this year’s Follies did a fantastic job of producing commercials. Pialis, a potent study drug disguised as a packet of chewing gum to help you excel in participation marks, is every keener’s dream come true. Never run out of things to say in class again, even if your utterance doesn’t make any sense. Hand getting too high in the air to come down for everything else? A small price to pay.
- Every law firm says their people make them special, but that law firm promotion clip has truly, deeply made a point that they really are all about the people™.
- After watching the personal-injury-firm-ad-turned-soap-opera-drama, I suggest the firm just use their hotline as the name of the firm—yup, like 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
- As an old-fashioned millennial, I’m not the most familiar with the words and phrases floating around the Gen Z court. Still, live-streaming decisions on TikTok may just be the next big thing—it will rejuvenate our tech-resistant profession! Though Professor Shaffer, the recurring Faculty star of Law Follies, may say Gen Zs take evidence rules all too lightly.
- Apart from making cameos in the show himself, Professor Niblett was also portrayed by an actor in the tax law-AI hype sketch. I know it is supposed to be ridiculous, and it is admittedly hard to pull an Aussie accent, but despite what you might have imagined, people don’t actually speak like that down under. (Source: I used to live there.)
- The nature documentary reminded me of a Follies classic—the “North American House Roach” in the 2021 show. Finally, another magical creature at U of T Law, the SNAILs, can rival the Roach’s sneakiness!
- Overall, this year’s Follies crew produced a solid two hours of entertainment, and those who declared they were not going to Follies at the beginning of the show really missed out on an opportunity to just sit back, laugh, and forget about schoolwork for a bit.
- On my way home after the Follies screening, I saw an advertisement just outside of Queen’s Park about free coffee and tea at IKEA restaurants. Even IKEA does it better than the law school café now. Maybe that could go into next year’s sketches if the café keeps on selling watery bean juice that used to be free for $2…
- What I like about Law Follies is seeing the same mixed bags of emotions playfully reenacted on the screen by different people in different ways every year—the hopes, dreams, dread, and exhaustion are all quintessential parts of the law school experience. As a 3L who will soon leave this place, I feel the temptation to end with a cliché: however all-consuming law school may be, this too shall pass.
