Jimmy Fallon honors mother Gloria in first Tonight Show following her death
In the video below, you can see what Jimmy had to say about his mother in the wake of her passing — including a story about how he and his mother would communicate the love that they had for each other. He was clearly emotional when sharing the story and talking about what his mother meant to him. He concluded the monologue by saying that he wanted nothing more than to continue to try to make his mother laugh, and to provide a little bit of humor and joy for many of the people out there watching at home. After all, there are many people out there going through tough times of their own and for some of them, this show is a beacon of light and positive energy.
One of the things that we do want to point out is some of the love that we’ve heard about towards Jimmy from some of the Tonight Show staff over the past day or two. The writers and crew seem to be especially fond of him and had nothing but praise for him upon his return. We do think that it is worth noting that Fallon didn’t open the show with the tribute to his mother — instead, he performed a pretty standard monologue for him before sitting down at the desk and choosing that moment to pour out his heart.
Our thoughts go out to Jimmy during this tough time for him, and in general the past couple of months have caused us to reevaluate our position on the Fallon iteration of The Tonight Show in general. Like he said in this segment his primary goal is laughter, and we do think that we as critics — whether it be here at CarterMatt or elsewhere — have pushed a little too hard in trying to make Fallon into someone that he’s not. He is not some political commentator who is going to up on the stage and deliver a series of of biting, timely remarks. He’s just a man who wants to bring people together and make them laugh. He’s certainly made mistakes a long the way, but his heart is in the right place.
Hopefully in the months to come Fallon continues to have a supportive group of people around him as he works through his personal pain while still serving his overall mission statement. (Photo: NBC.)