What Went Wrong with Falcon Crest
by Kristin Battestella
As a kid growing up watching the CBS night time soap Falcon Crest, I never realized David Selby as the superbly scheming Richard Channing was also werewolf Quentin Collins on my beloved Dark Shadows. Obviously I loved corvette driving playboy grandson Lorenzo Lamas (Renegade), but I also didn't noticed that conniving matriarch Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession) as Angela Channing looked just like my evil grandmother and now it's tough to unsee. For a series about generations of immigrant winemakers and fictitious Tuscany Valley power shakers whose names end in vowels, no one on Falcon Crest is actually Italian, either. Although one can ignore these innocuous quibbles, in this rewatch it's apparent that the grape withers on the vine as the 227 episode Falcon Crest goes on twice as long as it should have.
An opening murder sets the episodic 1981 Debut Season in motion complete with affairs in the winery, inheritance trials, and crazed relatives on the witness stand. The backstabbing, conniving lawyers, arranged marriages, and blackmail continue in the Second Year thanks to scheming illegitimate sons and car bombs. Granted those vehicular perils, weddings, temporarily paralyzed plots, and miraculous comatose awakenings are par for the soap opera course. Falcon Crest is both over the top like it's fellow prime time eighties compatriots yet the scandalous twists and dramatic cliffhangers are not unlike today's so-called prestige television. The wild Season Three is ahead of its time with an evil Illuminati-esque cabal, Nazi roots, kidnapped babies, escaped mental patients, and all aboard plane crashes. Seasonal guests and recurring stars such as ruthless mother Lana Turner (Peyton Place), conflicted doctor Cliff Robertson (Charly), and dubious Sarah Douglas (The People That Time Forgot) hold critical secrets, but old men don't last long on Falcon Crest – bearing the brunt of convenient or not so convenient falls, murders, and more not so shocking deaths. Certainly there are useless relations that could have been written out much sooner. At times, the incestuous conflicts of interest between family, business, and publications all in bed with each other are ridiculous. Dire moments are resolved imminently then quickly forgotten due to the uneven passage of time on Falcon Crest. Some action is minute to minute while months are said to have past for other stories. Fortunately, viewers don't have to pay strict attention to such details or take the preposterous luxuries so seriously to appreciate the bed hopping sabotage. Eerie confessionals, chilling church chases, and murderers disguised as nuns provide taut intensity as lone real Italian Gina Lollobrigida (Beat the Devil) does the tarantella and tells all of Falcon Crest how poisonous they really are.
Buried treasure beneath our titular vineyard and new Nazi war criminals jammed into the main cast, however, come on a bit too strong in Year Four and Falcon Crest's continuity suffers. Instead of four or six episodes to start or end the season, the Nazi gold plot limps through most of Season Four until a one and done shootout spectacle. The international cartel terrorizing all behind the scenes is written out with a few mentions of Interpol arrests as if it were that easy all along. Who's hired, fired, making backdoor phone calls, wheeling and dealing, or vowing to “draw up the necessary papers” gets old, too. Today's knowledgeable viewers will be frustrated by trials refusing to change venues yet complaining about the tainted jury pool in the ever incestuous Tuscany Valley. There's never any libel or slander for radio stations and newspapers. Serious, devious crimes garner mere slaps on the wrist while leap frogging business coups and stolen shares are developed, rushed, or dropped as needed. Surrogacy according to Falcon Crest is when a man impregnates another woman and then pays her after taking their child in a storyline that should never have happened yet takes up much too much time before an even worse priest in love The Thorn Birds detour, Monte Carlo kidnappings, and wine shipment hijackings with no consequences. Even the credits design is increasingly crappy with garish reds, bubbling special effects, and poor editing as Falcon Crest loses luster with generic eighties Dynasty copying. Unabashedly big hats and bling fall to boxy sequin dresses and pantsuits with pizzazz while grand woodwork is painted white, the exclusive Tuscany Downs racetrack is ditched, and tacky pink carpeting abounds in the new Del Oro fitness spa. The overlong seasons have plenty of time to catch every teased hair and white leather trend, and the big earthquake is ultimately a lame excuse to redecorate.
Poor Susan Sullivan's (It's A Living) likable writer wife Maggie Gioberti suffers almost every episode indeed. If it's not a death in the family, it's repeated work/script/journalism/radio/freelance/book harassment, custody suits, her own adoption discovery, devious sisters, or more domestic strife. That's not to mention the mugging, assaults, falls down the stairs, blindness, and brain tumors. Or the illicit kisses, explosions, and amnesia. Maggie's kidnapping and assault halfway thru Season Five is enough for viewers to tune out thanks to doing nothing authorities and flat out bad storytelling trying to tack on suspense with an ambiguous pregnancy. Robert Foxworth's (Six Feet Under) husband Chase Gioberti is meant to be the underdog hero of Falcon Crest. Of course, he's a veteran New York pilot who inherits a fifty acre vineyard with a free and clear castle abode! Being a vintner, however, isn't good enough as Chase must always have a cause – taking on everybody and stepping on everyone until he gets his way. How many times does Chase have to be shocked and surprised by how deep his gangster mother's criminal ties go? Even when victorious, Chase vows to seek those who perjured and influenced at the expense of his family and businesses. He uses his local council position as his own personal vengeance committee yet claims there is no peace in Tuscany solely because of shady at Falcon Crest. Chase repeatedly plays spy, wearing a gun and stepping on the law as it suits him for he is never wrong but everyone else is. Nothing is ever his fault, and when Maggie asks him to drop being a jerk and suggests they flee the valley they never should have come to in the first place, Chase refuses and leaves her to bear the brunt of the consequences alone. It's terrible that he is the least sympathetic to her plight. Chase selfishly says Maggie's problems are a waste of his time – she needs to support him because her not helping his political campaign is like them both having been raped. WTF? Chase should have been killed off much sooner, for he becomes exactly like the people he hated when he initially came to the valley.
The shoehorned in comings and goings means dates, ages, and previously unknown relations don't make much sense. People who seem to be early twenties look over thirty, but fortysomethings are suddenly having more children and surprise siblings that logistically don't fit into the years given. Falcon Crest adds such classy guest stars because it can, not because it should, leaving ladies like Anne Archer (Patriot Games) and Morgan Fairchild (Flamingo Road) as if the series doesn't know what to do with them. Falcon Crest is either unable or not willing to elevate semi-regulars, resulting in unnecessarily drawn out less interesting storylines or underutilized and unceremonious write-outs in a bloated cast that adds more people rather than more character development. Though a provocative plot at the time, an abusive father is played for sympathy – blaming his victimized daughter because he's not in the wrong and deserves her understanding – and Fairchild deserved to have more focus in a crowded Fifth Season. Falcon Crest tries to be cool with singer Apollonia (Purple Rain), and while it's not her fault, it just doesn't belong on this show. Likewise the second generation Stavros kids are hollow scene stealers in the worst way, putting the writing on the wall for Falcon Crest while Kim Novak (Bell, Book, and Candle) and John Saxon (Black Christmas) are stuck going round and round in lengthy mobster back and forths. Some guests never interact with the main cast, and in the second half of the series, characters rarely stay for more than a season after their seemingly so important tangents are run into the ground. Suddenly critical, delicious people like Jane Badler (V) disappear before more contrived relations and retcons as if people or events never existed. Early on Falcon Crest cultivated a mature, classy gravitas, but it's easy to fast forward over Dana Sparks (Passions) as the newly returned Vicki Gioberti and Brett Cullen (The Young Riders) as Angela's would be reluctant ward Dan Fixx as they attempt to lure a younger audience with Fame-esque jazzercise montages.
Sweet Porsches, Rolls Royces, and a Lamborghini with classic scissor doors can't save Falcon Crest once Robert Stack arrives whispering in the shadows like this is an Unsolved Mysteries crossover. A cigar chomping hackneyed district attorney also plays wannabe Dragnet as characters are mocked and humiliated in laughably bad plans contrasting traumatic rape flashbacks. Falcon Crest's writing is terribly uneven with no thematic cohesion and no idea how to maximize the house players. Every person who joins the credits after shipping magnate Cesar Romero (Batman) arrives is terrible – cluttering, annoying regulars frustratingly taking time away from recurring players appearing in better plots. Angela Channing being sentenced to community service and meddling as she volunteers at the hospital could have been a new fun element, too. Instead, Maggie's delivery is turned into a family farce with Angela complaining about the damage to her $10,000 rug, and the mismatched tone plays more like a meandering daytime soap. Personal slights, double crosses, assaults, and kidnappings are treated the same in scale when convoluted who owns what winery switcharoos get repetitive and in the end don't even matter that much. Abundant nonsensical relations are piled on with Ana Alicia's (Ryan's Hope) crazy Melissa Agretti singing in the 1940s night club and whodunit murder mystery parties despite the seemingly more important stolen babies. A brief Black adoptee is presented as a streetwise, precocious child who can't be kept despite all the Channing money and power, and it's quite racist alongside acupuncture that's treated as mysticism instead of alternative medicine. Once the faithfully long serving majordomo Chao-Li Chi (The Prestige) is eventually elevated to the main credits – after potentially deserving storylines with his daughter Rosalind Chao (Deep Space Nine) disappear – the characters themselves joke that Year Six seems like a bad dream. Hot damn, if they had copied Dallas' Bobby in the Shower erasure, Falcon Crest may have been better.
After barely paying attention to it, a cruel storyline featuring Margaret Ladd's (Mozart in the Jungle) Emma Channing being left at the altar is played for laughs with numerous women chasing said bigamist through the church. Such isolated, tonally off tangents never intersect with bigger events, leaving threads that go on and on everywhere. Try hard synth music that can't compare to the original Bill Conti (North and South) theme suggests this is a low budget sleazy cop show rather than a premium melodrama, and when Richard and Maggie finally happen, it's just a music video montage. Threats to jump off the roof, injuries, and water rescues that deserve their own time are overwhelming yet undercooked as guest stars take up too much time playing at Casablanca with fog, fedoras, and airplanes. Dreamy flashbacks and courtroom farce run Falcon Crest into the ground and off the pier – literally. Multiple seasons worth of twists are treated as intercut shockers thrown at the screen to open Year Seven. Even Maggie calls the whole thing one bad sick joke and slaps her selfish adult daughter, and by that point, Maggie, same. After skipping around to ignore the revolving cast door and catching a few more weddings and fires, reading the episode summaries is enough to bounce through the limping Season Nine and its reduced Angela Channing thanks to Wyman's ill health. Unfortunately, the Final 89-90 Season's preposterous theme music, dark lighting, and attempted edgy action acerbate the rapid child aging and claims that Richard has never been involved in the wine business nor taking over Falcon Crest – when that was his main motivation for most of the series. Rather than any proper tribute or legacy, a voiceover toast sends Falcon Crest out with an unrecognizably bad whimper.
