Season 9 rewatch

juschill

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I've made it to season 9 in my multi year task. Really enjoyed season 8 more than I remember.

I know season 9 is basically unwatchable except for the great Gregory Harrison. My biggest gripe so far other than the stupid way Maggie dies is Angela hiring a detective to follow Pilar to find out she fooled around with Richard. What? Who cares? She fooled around with Malcolm St. Clair too. How would a private detective find out about a past affair anyway? Plus Richard was in jail.

Who wrote this garbage?

Also I hated Mark Lindsey whatever in Dallas and I hate him more here.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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I guess Maggie's death was supposed to parallel Chase's drowning 2 1/2 years before. (I just learned that Billy Moses had to pressure them not to drown Cole when he left -- so Giobertis drowning was an intentional motif).

There was a new writing team almost every year during the last half of FC's run, some of whom even bragged in the press that they'd never watched the show -- which is rarely a good sign. (I don't know if that was the case for the new Season 9 crew).

I still don't remember very much from Season 9 (and I'm still not convinced I actually saw all of it). Some people feel the writing improved -- and the writing had obviously been a problem for a while. My memory of it, shared by others, was that the vibe was just too different, that it just didn't feel like FALCON CREST, be it good FC or bad FC.

It became darker, yes, but not the right kind of darker -- more like a slick, soulless '90s type of thing (even though the '90s were barely there by Season 9).

Season 7 became too frenetic (maybe that where the name "Freilich" came from) and even Michael Filerman complained about it. CBS was frustrated with the ratings slide and called up Filerman and said, "fix it!" (or so the legend goes). Camille Marchetta and others came in for Season 8, returned to an orchestral score, and tried to get serious again, but turned the show from silly (Season 7) to kind of boring for Season 8. Ratings continued to spiral (lead-in DALLAS was plummeting, too) and the new team came in for Season 9, dumping the orchestral score once again and replacing it with a synthesized series of musical compositions.

Change is inevitable -- and necessary -- as a television series rolls along. But getting the balance right is the trick, and few new producers can do so -- or may even know (or care) to do so. That was the executive producers' responsibility, Filerman, but he failed at it (but he was no David Jacobs).

But I took the spiral of the big four '80s wealth-based nighttime serials rather personally. They started out with such promise, a promise everybody seemed to sense. But their last halves and their related collapses were painful indeed.

I recall one of my co-workers in the breakroom circa 1988 snarling, "those shows drive me up the wall!" She'd try to continue watching them, had watched for a few years, but their increasingly neurotic narratives she'd come to find pretty maddening.

No one disagreed with her. I chimed in (much as I do now). But these programs just seemed to lose their identities as the decade proceeded. They were no longer character dramas about rich families, but shrilly self-conscious metaphors for the '80s in some way, overly aware of their cultural significance but out of focus or creative steam. Still all dressed up but nowhere to go.

Which left the audience at home drooling in stunned disbelief at how none of them (except KNOTS) could tell a story anymore.



Unlike some, I did not mind the new arrangement of the theme music for Season 9 -- even if I was meh on the visuals:

 
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juschill

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I’m not sure that they even paid attention to their own season.

Michael tells Richard they are second cousins, ok fine. How come when Michael and Angela meet they’ve never met before?

Later Michael mentions to Lauren that she’s a distant relative of Maggie? Which is it? Are they related to Richard or Maggie?
 

Jock Og

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As I have said before FALCON CREST 9 was like reinventing the wheel. A nonagon would leave a ride very uncomfortable and so to cut a long story cut that sums up the last year perfectly. Andrea Thompson and Gregory Harrison were the only newbies worth their salt. @juschill fasten your seat belt and have a sick bucket beside you for at least two atrocious episodes, in the name of FALCON CREST.





Lance and his banker wife (beautiful Pilar). Alas she just couldn't fill the void left by Melissa.




Lance is examining the acid content of grapes, in one of the Falcon Crest vineyards. Pilar arrives in their caramel coloured Mercedes SL; to speak to her husband, (a scene from season 9, 1989-'90):

Pilar: "For your information the old lady is having me followed."

Lance: "Hey that old lady happens to be my grandmother. Show a little respect."

Pilar: "Damn you! You're not listening to me. She hired someone to follow me."

Lance resumes his examination of the grapes: "Why you hiding something?"

Pilar: "Will you wake up! Angela is up to something, she's trying to come between us."

Lance: "Pilar hey nobody is going to come between us. Not ever!"

Pilar looks across the lush vineyards: "I just get so worried sometimes."

Lance: "Why?"

Pilar: "Cause I know that your grandmother still sees me as the little peasant girl down the road, running around in bare feet and a torn dirty dress."

Lance consoles Pilar: "Hey you're my wife. I'll take care of it!"
 

Falcon Crest I

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I've made it to season 9 in my multi year task. Really enjoyed season 8 more than I remember.

I know season 9 is basically unwatchable except for the great Gregory Harrison. My biggest gripe so far other than the stupid way Maggie dies is Angela hiring a detective to follow Pilar to find out she fooled around with Richard. What? Who cares? She fooled around with Malcolm St. Clair too. How would a private detective find out about a past affair anyway? Plus Richard was in jail.

Who wrote this garbage?

Also I hated Mark Lindsey whatever in Dallas and I hate him more here.
1989 to 1990 season was mostly awful. Richard and Lance took a back seat so the show focused more on Michael Sharpe and Charley Saint James. Emma was a particular highlight for me, though. Damon Rossini or even Vince Karlotti should have reappeared, instead of rotten Charley.
 

Richard Denault

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Pilar: "Cause I know that your grandmother still sees me as the little peasant girl down the road, running around in bare feet and a torn dirty dress."
How the Hispanics would like it. Pilar barefoot and dirty. Cesar seemed more polite than Gus. In one of the final episodes Pilar had lived on the streets of Chicago.
 

Richard Denault

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Although Charley's departure may seem abrupt, it was already planned in the Bible for the ninth season.
In this @TJP interview in 2005 with David Sheinkopf who played Danny
There is an interesting comment
Thomas the show undergoing all those changes the final year, was the general mood on the set sort of sad? Was there any feeling of resignation among the cast members?
David I think there was like a little bit of ODIUM just because there were so many different changes and so many different storylines going on. They [the producers] were trying to bring a new face to the show, trying to bring in a new audience, trying to make it a little bit younger.!!!
Jerry Thorpe hired David that's why he tries to excuse him
There is also this comment
How did you personally experience those changes? Were there any special reactions from fans, like in the mail, or was there any other kind of feedback you received?
I got a lot of fan mail. Most of it was pretty positive. People liked my character, and they liked the addition to the show. They liked the relationship between me and Carla Gugino. It seemed to be taken quite well by most of the fans.
Well, that's great, especially because there were some characters in season 9 people did not like at all, like Andrea Thompson's character, Genele Ericson, for example. She was, as we know from fan mail, a character that didn't really fit into the show, and people were quite hesitant specifically
Poor Andre a was a good actress but the character was hateful until she confessed to Father Bob 9-13. And she became a second Terry
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juschill

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The creators this season did not even respect their own story let alone prior seasons.

Genele after Danny’s accident: “Michael I need to know what you’re capable of.”

You literally murdered your own sister over Frank Agretti and you’re worried about an accident caused by Michael? That’s where the line is drawn?
 

juschill

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I don’t even think they tried this season. Michael is related to Richard, then Maggie. They waste half a season on Charlie. Waste Danny being there just to overbook it by saying he’s Richard’s son. Richard, who spent his formative years in Europe somehow met up with Michael Sharpe’s wife to be and carried on an affair with her, around the same time he would have been married to Lorraine’s mother.

I so hate what they did to this show in the end. I wish Gregory Harrison would have showed up earlier but the rest of this season can GFY.
 
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