MovieChat Forums > Falcon Crest (1981) Discussion > Lazy writing in Season 2

Lazy writing in Season 2

posted 8 years ago by vampslayer33000
15 replies | jump to latest

I'm rewatching Season 2 now and have more gripes than I remember having when I originally watched it at a younger age.

Julia murders Carlos Agretti because she was having an affair with him and he wanted to bring Falcon Crest down? That was just slapped together. There was no interaction between Julia and Carlos. Just one time she passed by him and said hi on her way out.

No reason at all to think that she would murder him to save Falcon Crest. At the time she's telling Angela to let Chase run Falcon Crest and it's not that big of a deal but she's going to go out and murder Agretti because he's going to bring down Falcon Crest? Which he really had never expressed an interest in doing so. He was always just protecting his own vineyards.

Richard, Lance, Cole all had motive to kill Agretti. Even Angela. But the writers say, "Hey, let's pin it on the most illogical character."

Don't remember having this many problems with it before.

[–] rosemei 8 years ago

The resolution of that who-dun-nit was just plain bizarre.

[–] engle_james 8 years ago

I don't think they just chose Julia at random to be the killer; rewatching that season, there are definitely clues, albeit subtle. Julia's decision to frame Cole was because he threatened Lance's inheritance, and that became very obvious on rewatching. Even the episode where Carlo was killed, Julia was wearing something very similar to the what the killer wore. It's true, her affair with Carlo wasn't known to the audience until the cliffhanger, but they did elaborate on it in season 3, complete with new flashbacks. They knew all along Julia was going to be the killer, but they purposely didn't show their affair so that we would be surprised.

As for Julia wanting to keep FC under her mother's control, we saw that even in season 1; Julia asked Maggie to help get Emma into counseling, but when Angela finally told Julia the truth about Emma's role in Jason's death, Julia backtracked and refused to cooperate with Maggie and Chase. She wanted Chase in the family business, but not to the exclusion of her son.

[–] PrometheusTree64 8 years ago

Season 2 was one of the two best years of the show. And what it may have occasionally lacked in logic, it made up for in atmosphere and chutzpah.

--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

[–] doubledragon-19441 7 years ago

Spoilers

They were clearly trying to pull a fast one, going for the 'least expected' character.

There were a few clues during the season, if you watch carefully. The fact that Julia's car went off the road and it doesn't show how or why made it pretty obvious that something suspicious was up with her.

One of the biggest clues though, if you notice, every time Julia goes out in public she wears all black, dressing like a widow, as if mourning the death of a lover. I feel as though this was their way of slowly leading into the reveal that her and Carlo were lovers.

Another time, Julia and Chase are discussing potential suspects in the murder. Julia says something about the killer being in plain sight, and somebody you least expect.

Overall though, the decision to have Julia emerge as the killer made almost no sense. It was difficult to work her character back into the normal storyline for the show after this, so her appearances were sporadic until the character was ultimately cancelled in the later seasons.

[–] jarrodmcdonald-1 7 years ago

I don't think it was the wrong decision to make her the killer. In fact, it seems very obvious they had decided it from the start-- how she would turn out that way-- because if you look at her incarceration story, it's about Angela as much as it's about her. The writers are showing Angela has made enemies over the years and now that her own daughter needs mercy, it will be denied because people want to see Julia pay in a way they could never make Angela pay.

It's kind of the same in shows like Bonanza and The Big Valley where the little guys want to see the Cartwrights and the Barkleys knocked down a few pegs. In this case, it's the high and mighty Channings, and Julia's crimes make her crucifixion easy-- she turned out like she did because of Angela and it's part of her destiny to be the one in the family who is made to suffer most and pay for everything. She's a sympathetic villainess. If they hadn't made Julia the killer, they wouldn't have been able to present a very vulnerable element within Angela's family. Also, having a murderer under their roof not only has a lasting effect on Angela, but on Emma and Lance as well.

[–] doubledragon-19441 7 years ago

Logically, it was impossible for Julia to have killed Carlo, since at the time she was in San Francisco with Richard for the New Globe Shareholder's meeting. Then again, so were most of the other suspects.

But that's television, though. Gotta love it

[–] jarrodmcdonald-1 7 years ago

There might have been a few scenes cut where there was a passage of time, thus making it possible for her to get back in order to commit the murder. I'm sure they intended her to be the culprit all along. The theme of the show right from the start was that power corrupts, and in Angela Channing's case, it destroyed any sense of normalcy with her daughters. It plays like a Shakespearean tragedy. Carlo was not a major character-- his death was only an excuse for the writers to explore vulnerabilities within the core family.

[–] doubledragon-19441 7 years ago

I suppose you could also say up until that point, Julia's character was somewhat minor. She wasn't very pivotal...episodes were fluffed out with her fleeting romances with Tony Cumson, otherwise there wasn't alot of creative direction involving her character. She wasn't really a vital character. She was portrayed as somebody who struggles with alcohol and substance abuse, which especially comes to light during season 3, the rest of the time struggling with an inferiority complex, not having any control over her life, blaming her overbearing mother for everything. I find her character has parallels with characters on other shows at the time.

[–] jarrodmcdonald-1 7 years ago

I think they kept her deliberately in the shadows for the first season. The very first episode involves Emma, and right away, we see Angela's youngest daughter is very fragile. But what we don't realize is that Angela's oldest daughter is also quite fragile and potentially much more dangerous. It's like they knew who Julia was when they started the show, but they took time revealing her. Yes, we were shown that she had a drinking problem and we saw that her mother had in key ways taken over the raising of Lance. So we get these clues that Julia comes from a powerful family but she herself seems very powerless, and of course that all begins to come to the surface during season 2 and erupts in gunfire during the cliffhanger. I think the shooting of Jacqueline can also be read as not just a woman getting in the way, but probably Julia had a subliminal urge of even shooting Angela. Jacqueline, who is really a side of Angela, takes the fall.

I find the evolution of Julia the most interesting of all the characters on the show. The minute she is unmasked as a murderess it seems like there is no way out for her. Yet she winds up becoming a nun later on, so truly Julia goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. Abby Dalton did a fantastic job with a very challenging role. She should have been nominated for an Emmy.

[–] engle_james 7 years ago

Interesting analysis of the Julia character, doubledragon and Jarrod. One comment I would make is about whether Julia was an alcoholic. Yes, she drank, and I can think of one time where she was tricked by Lance and Melissa into finding out Tony had remarried, and she went to a bar and got plastered, but I'm not sure she was an alcoholic. I also remember a couple of scenes where Angela and Lance tried to make it look to other people like Julia drank too much- once she made a comment to Maggie that Angela didn't like and Angela implied what Julia said couldn't be trusted because she was drunk even though she wasn't. Another time, Julia was having a good time at a party and seemed happy and Lance suggested in front of the Giobertis that, again, Julia was drunk.

I'm not saying she couldn't have been an alcoholic, but I don't think alcohol impacted her actions much.

[–] jarrodmcdonald-1 7 years ago

Thanks James. Well, some alcoholics have dry spells then go off the wagon. Her getting plastered after she learns about Tony's remarriage seems like a strong indicator that she used booze to deal with the psychological turmoil in her life. But it's interesting that both Angela and Lance judge her as a drunk, since they have their own sins. I guess they both expect more from their daughter/mother.

It occurs to me that the story the writers gave Morgan Fairchild would have been better if that had been assigned to Abby Dalton. I think given her very unstable nature, it could be argued that Julia was probably an undiagnosed schizophrenic. The drinking and the need for Tony to save her, so her good side could win out, makes more sense if we frame it in these terms. Even her becoming a nun plays into this, because she is giving the evil over to God.

[–] doubledragon-19441 7 years ago

While most of the time it is more implied that Julia is an alcoholic...in Season 3 she clearly abuses alcohol and pills heavily. And before that she spent long hours alone in the 'wine tasting' room...well...you can figure out the rest :)

I see alot of similarities between her character and Susan Dey's character on Emerald Point.

[–] jarrodmcdonald-1 7 years ago

I see a lot of similarities between her character and Susan Dey's character on Emerald Point.

Great comparison. I'm glad someone else still remembers and references Emerald Point N.A.S. It is actually my favorite primetime soap of the 80s. It should have had a much longer run.

Each show during that decade had a high strung female character, though they were all slightly different. Knots had Valene; Dynasty had Claudia; and for awhile, Dallas had Jenna (during the dream season). In the last episode of Emerald Point, we learned that Celia (Dey's character) had witnessed her mother being raped when she was younger. So she had a very traumatic event happen to her when she was a child.

We didn't get a lot of information about Julia's childhood on Falcon Crest-- at least none I remember. But I think we can assume that Angela Channing was too busy building and running an empire to properly address the needs of Julia and Emma-- so it's a classic case of the sins of the mother being revisited on the daughters. Unlike her counterparts on the other primetime soaps, Julia took to violence. She could be a much more dangerous woman than the rest of them combined.

[–] doubledragon-19441 7 years ago

Emerald Point was a great show! Such a great cast...the combined talents of Richard Dean Anderson, Robert Loggia, Sela Ward, Susan Dey(right between her stints on her two big shows, Partridge Family and LA Law) and a pair of Bond girls.

I noticed Emerald Point had alot of similar storylines that Falcon Crest had. This is not surprising, since I know alot of the same creative staff worked on both shows. For example, on both shows the main female protagonist is named Maggie. And both shows involve a storyline where 'Maggie' ends up getting stalked/kidnapped by a psychopathic writer. The Adams family is basically the Channing family, as they have all the money and power and control the valley. And as mentioned before, Susan Dey's character(Celia?) is basically Julia. Celia hates the Navy and drinks over it and lets it destroy all of her relationships, just as Falcon Crest does the same to Julia. Sela Ward's character(Hillary) is basically Melissa, and Richard Dean Anderson plays the young cocky arrogant jerk character(Lance). Dennis Weaver(Tom) is the self-righteous Chase character.

I liked how Emerald Point incorporated an action movie/espionage component, and also had a great theme song by Bill Conti. It's CRIMINAL that the show never ended up with a second season. I feel like some of the younger stars like Sela Ward and Dorian Clark were somewhat robbed of a chance at being bigger stars.

[–] jarrodmcdonald-1 7 years ago

It must have been that CBS had too many good shows and not enough space on the schedule. If I recall correctly, they had given Cagney & Lacey's slot to Emerald Point. But there was a huge fan protest (and write-in campaign) to get CBS to bring C&L back. When that happened, C&L got its old time slot and EP was pulled, which did not seem fair.

If anything, EP should have resembled Dynasty since it had the same creators, the Shapiros. I do think all primetime soaps had certain archetypical characters. There was always a young vixen (like Melissa and Hillary); and always a misunderstood woman with deep emotional problems (Julia & Celia); etc. It's how they were cast and how the individual stories were played that made them slightly different.

What I loved most about EP, aside from its soapy aspects, was that because of the military setting, there was a cold war element going on-- so it had a lot of suspense. I thought Robert Vaughn was truly fantastic in his role (didn't he play a guy who was selling secrets to the Russians?) and then there was Jill St. John who played the girls' aunt-- and somehow she was involved with Vaughn romantically. It definitely should have run for several more seasons.