Roy Wood Jr.’s Urgent Reminder About Connection In ‘Lonely Flowers’

What ever happened to connection? The act of fostering community with face-to-face interactions, casual chit-chat with strangers, first-name basis conversations with neighbors, or regular check-ins with loved ones outside of birthdays and holidays. In such divided times, where is society’s will to connect on a deeper level, human being to human being?

“It’s gone,” Roy Wood Jr. states frankly at the top of his new comedy special.

The comedian’s bleak declaration may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s actually an unnerving revelation about the unhealthy state of our hyper-avoidant society. People may not be ready to face that truth yet, but in “Lonely Flowers,” Wood Jr. is the messenger determined to open our eyes to what has gone ignored (and untreated) for far too long.

Filmed against a sunset backdrop of a single silhouetted flower at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C., Wood Jr. holds court about society’s lack of interrelatedness in his hour-long special, which premiered on Hulu on Jan. 17. With a collection of humorous small-bore observations, the former “Daily Show” correspondent thoughtfully takes stock of how we as people have lost touch in the unlikeliest of ways — from the decline of customer service in retail and the lost art of small talk at grocery stores to our ludicrous irritation with phone calls on cellular devices that “were invented for talking.”

Occasionally, Wood Jr. pivots from everyday jokes about our antisocial climate to crack wise about slightly related topics, like rude employee “overlords” at self-checkout lanes, the discomfort of making new friends at 40, and how the backlash against “the first Black woman mermaid” spurred more protests and racial divide than it should’ve.

All these instances circle back to Wood Jr.’s through line about modern detachment and the importance of connection, overarching themes that define “Lonely Flowers,” an apt metaphor for the tragic beauty of humanity.

“We’re the lonely flowers,” Wood Jr. explained of his special’s title to The Wrap. “Like, a flower by itself is one of the saddest things you can see, but a group of flowers together is one of the most beautiful things you can see.”

That image is, ultimately, what Wood Jr. is seeking in his special, as he intensely repeats the notion that, once upon a time, “We was connected,” but not anymore. Such a harmonious state seems much harder to return to now in a “post-pandemic” world,…