Summary:
Airing in the time slot following CBS' immensely popular Dallas, Falcon Crest sought to hold on to the soap opera addicts with yet another saga of the rich and greedy fighting for power and sex. The setting was the ficticious Tuscany Valley, located in the beautiful Napa Valley Region outside San Francisco, and the industry around which the action centered was wine-making. Angela Channing, the matriarch and principal empire-builder on Falcon Crest was powerful and respected and feared by almost everyone whose lives she touched. Angela ran the Falcon Crest winery with an iron hand and tried to manipulate everyone to suit her purposes. When the series began, her nephew Chase Gioberti had just inherited 50 acres of vineyards from his recently deceased father, Jason Gioberti, Angela's brother. Angela was convinced that the land should be hers, but Chase brought his wife Maggie and two children, Cole and Victoria, from New York to live in the valley and manage his land. And it all goes downhill from here.
From the get-go, Angela and Chase got into many scrapes over that land. Angela first tried to ruin Chase by stopping a necessary bank loan; then tried to ruin his relationship with beloved son Cole by saying that he might someday inherit Falcon Crest. When those plans didn't work, she tried to get others' vineyards, and this is where Lance Cumson comes into play. Lance was the typical playboy who wanted money and power from his grandmother, but was too lazy to work for it. Lance was tied to Angela because of the power she had over him. Angela even pressured Lance to marry Melissa Agretti, the Agrettis' daughter, who had plenty of ambition and greed in her own right, in order to consolidate the large Agretti and Falcon Crest wineries under her control. He did marry Melissa, but he still fooled around with other women, and Melissa also had an affair with Cole, which resulted in her getting pregnant. The first season ended with Angela losing control of Falcon Crest to Chase after the real cause of death of his father was revealed: Emma Channing accidentally pushed him, causing him to fall to his death.
In the 1982-1983 season, it seemed as though no one could be nasty to Angela until Richard Channing came to town. He arrived in San Francisco to run "The Globe", a newspaper that had been owned by his late father, and Angela's ex-husband Douglas Channing. Richard inherited 50 percent, and the rest was shared by Julia Cumson, Angela's daughter and Lance's...
