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.
