nextbet Roy Wood Jr. Captures Our Fractious Culture in an Insightful New Special

2025-02-20 13:01

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Three days before Donald J. Trump becomes president again, Roy Wood Jr., a crafty progressive-leaning comic, has released a special, “Lonely Flowers,” that begins with this ominous line: “We ain’t going to make it.”

It gets your attention and raises questions. Who is “we”? What aren’t we going to make? Is this going to be funny or bleak?

Wood, who has described his comedy as a kind of journalism, likes teasing introductions that throw you into the middle of a thought. His 2017 hour, “Father Figure,” opens with this great joke: “But if we get rid of the Confederate flag, how am I going to know who the dangerous white people are?”

“Lonely Flowers,” on Hulu, is not directly about Trump, but it’s the first major special since the election to capture the fractious mood in the culture that gave him a victory. This hour, both funny and bleak, does not specialize in topical political bits,90jili but jokes that build a broader, deeper argument: Less newspaper editorial, more magazine essay.

As the title hints, the new special focuses on the implications of the growing solitude of Americans. It’s comedy that echoes perfectly with the Atlantic cover story “The Anti-Social Century,” by Derek Thompson, who makes the case that the radical decline in time we spend with other people is the hallmark of our era. But while that article deploys facts, statistics and reportage to illustrate the repercussions of this lack of connection, Roy Wood cracks wise about the grocery store cashier. He gets across the same cautionary point.

But many of their smiles shrank when they were asked about the embattled Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has been under fire since CNN reported this week on the lewd comments he made on a pornography website several years ago. According to CNN, Mr. Robinson wrote on the site that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that slavery was not bad. He also recounted on the site how he went “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a teenager.

The answer? He wouldn’t.

Wood’s gift is melding small-bore observational humor into a resonant metaphor. Americans used to be known for our customer service. Now, he says, you can’t even expect an amiable reception at a gun range. “How you going to be rude to someone who showed up to practice murder?” he asks, flabbergasted.

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