First, I realize that the real answer to this question is that the writers did a plot retcon, that they trully intended for Jacqueline to be Richard's mother at the time, and then decided that storylines were endless with Angela being Richard's mother instead.
However, putting the "real" answer aside, what did Jacqueline have to gain by falsely posing as Richard's mother in 1982-83, even to the point of him being in her will?
She was trying to protect Chase and his family, so by telling Richard that Chase was his brother, she was hoping he would lay off Chase, Maggie, Cole, etc. It's a good reason that holds up.
shareIt's not something that stands up once they retconned it and made him Angela's son. It's also pretty feeble that Douglas and Jacqueline would have stolen Richard at birth and kept him from Angela for all this time, especially as Douglas and Angela went on to have two more children. In the later seasons though, they were just grasping at straws for interesting plotlines and it showed.
shareAmen. As soon as they come up with that ridiculous retcon, I tuned out. That was the kind of crap they pull on daytime soaps.
shareIt might have been kind of interesting, in a "Luke Skywalker finding out Darth Vader is his father" sort of way, but it just came across as stupid and desperate. There was no plausible reason for Douglas and Jacqueline to have done such a thing, and then a year after it was revealed, Richard started his battle against Angela again for no reason. Dumb.
shareI think it does hold up. Jacqueline was afraid that Richard would go after Chase and destroy him and his family, as he had already tried to do numerous times. She thought by telling Richard that she was his mother, and therefore Chase's brother, that he would quit going after Chase and focus his wrath on Angela. Not only would that protect Chase, it would also have been a delicious revenge, to have Richard try to destroy Angela and vice versa.
I agree it was a ret-con, of course, but I also can accept that Jacqueline would have lied about it and why. Protecting Chase was always her goal, and it made sense that she would have gone to her grave keeping the truth from both Richard and Angela.
It was really all just too lame. Jacqueline was incredibly powerful and could have dealt with Richard in any number of ways if necessary, she didn't need to create an elaborate ruse of being his mother. She was the head of a powerful cartel that simply had people eliminated if necessary, though she obviously chose not to eliminate Richard because she believed he was her son.
Furthermore, the whole thing is inconsistent with Richard's age. He was supposed to be in his mid-30s when he first arrived in Tuscany (Angela makes reference to his birth 35 years earlier), and several years younger than Julia who was in her 40s at the time (Lance was 22 when Richard arrived). But then Peter Stavros tells Angela that Richard was in fact the baby she had before Julia, which means he would be at least 6-10 years older than he should have been. Even if he didn't know his exact birthdate, Richard himself would surely know his own age as he was growing up. None of it made much sense because they were plucking things out of thin air.
Interesting comments. But I think viewers accepted it, because they enjoyed the chemistry between David Selby and Jane Wyman. So having them related and going at each other in a mother-son sort of way was something people bought.
I remember when that plot twist happened in the later seasons, I loved it. Because I felt that Angela and Richard would eventually come to terms with how much alike they were, and that was intriguing.
As for Jacqueline, a motive for telling Richard he was her son was to prevent Angela from having him. Jacqueline could have two sons, and Angela none, just two daughters. Everything Jacqueline did was to destroy enemies (including Angela) and protect Chase.
I don't think viewers did buy it because the ratings tanked. It was still a top 25 show up to that point and then fell out of the Top 40 afterwards. I'm sure it was due to more than just that particular storyline, but it was certainly a prime example of the increasingly silly plots they were coming up with by that point. However you look at it, it just didn't add up logically. It was the stuff of trashy daytime soaps where they just want you to accept it rather than question it.
shareAgain, I liked the plot twist. I think it made sense for Richard to be Angela's son. But it would have been better if they had known this (different writers I suppose) in the earlier seasons-- so that when Angela found out about Richard being Jacqueline's son that she had the flashback of losing her own son at the same time, and wondering (but burying the thought in the back of her subconscious) if Richard really was her son. As I said, I think it's a key twist in the show, which indicates how Angela is connected more to Richard-- but instead of it being retconned, it should have been the original plan all along for this to be revealed later.
The ratings did tank, as you said, for a variety of reasons. The stories were becoming too dark-- I felt the worst story was the one that involved the group of 13, where Roscoe Lee Browne was brought on to stir up trouble. And I hated the way they wrote John Callahan's character. Too many errors, grasping at straws, a revolving door of big name guest stars playing characters not fully fleshed out and stories that often went nowhere in the later seasons.
It might have worked better had it been the story right from the beginning, though it would have made everything different right from the start (eg - Angela and Douglas were friends in the first season before he died, and they had two other children together who were initially born before Richard and then retconnned into being younger than Richard later). Douglas being married to Angela, them having two daughters, and then Douglas having an affair with Jacqueline where she becomes pregnant with Richard all works logically. But Douglas kidnapping his own first born child with Jacqueline and making Angela believe the baby died because he hated her, and then staying with her for many more years to have two daughters just seemed like desperate crap plucked out of thin air. It might have worked better if Douglas had never been in on faking the baby's death and it was something Jacqueline did by herself, though it's still a stretch of the imagination.
I get that they needed to stir things up a bit in later seasons and also increase Richard's prominence in the show once Chase left, but I don't think the writers and producers in charge of the show at that point were skilled enough to revitalise things. The Thirteen were just a poor variation of The Cartel, and there seemed little logic in Richard wanting to join them - especially after the problems he'd had with the Cartel a couple of years earlier. The Leslie Caron character was pointless (in fact so were most of the guest stars). Vicki #2 was detestable and nothing at all like the character Jamie Rose played. From 1986 onwards, it was just a downward slide they couldn't stop.
Honestly I never paid much attention to Douglas. In terms of the show's backstory, I get that he was important in Angela's past. But because he was hardly on the show, I was willing to go along with them changing some of his story and being a strange ally of Jacqueline's. In fact that is how it should have been written from the start. He could have been on amicable terms with Angela, outwardly for the sake of his daughters and grandson Lance, but deep down it is believable that he had been keeping secrets that would (even intentionally) harm Angela.
At any rate, I don't want to waste a lot of time going back and forth on this. Obviously, you did not like the later storyline and I thought it was a brilliant twist. In fact, for me it's one of the brighter moments story-wise in those later seasons which for a variety of reasons were dreadfully dull and often pointless.
Amen. As soon as they come up with that ridiculous retcon, I tuned out. That was the kind of crap they pull on daytime soaps.