Richard Channing
Telly Talk Winner
LV
13
- Messages
- 3,861
- Reaction score
- 10,098
- Awards
- 25
- Location
- Tuscany Valley
- Member Since
- December 21st, 2013
Just came across this blog with an interesting essay on season 8 of Falcon Crest, specifically Melissa's exit and Pilar's introduction. His on views on Melissa's exit and how it was handled seem to echo how most fans feel about it.
The Single-Handed Destruction of "Falcon Crest" by Kristian Alfonso's Pilar Ortega
One of the worst instances of both eliminating an established character, and introducing a brand new one, on a long-running series took place 25 years ago in 1988 at the start of the 8th Season of the hit prime time soap "Falcon Crest" (1981-90). At the time, I was in High School and "Falcon Crest" was my favorite TV series that year. I enjoyed the fast-paced storylines and wry humor that had been integrated throughout the 6th and 7th seasons of the show. I particularly enjoyed the storyline that had been devised for the series' resident scheming vixen, Melissa Agretti (Ana Alicia) at the end of the 7th season. Having found a legal document in the cliffhanger episode that proved the Agretti family originally owned the land that Falcon Crest was built on, and that Angela Channing's (Jane Wyman) family had cheated the Agrettis out of their rightful heritage decades ago, Melissa sued Angela and won a court ruling that granted her full ownership of the series' titular winery. As Melissa kicked Angela and her family out of their longtime home, and moved onto the property herself, the established matriarch of the Tuscany Valley warned Melissa that "You won, Melissa. But you won't have one night in this house without wondering what I'm up to. And, believe me, I'll be up to something...I'll be back," thus setting the stage for a potentially interesting and exciting storyline for the 8th season.
Over the summer, I breathlessly anticipated what would happen during the 8th season as the rivalry between Melissa and Angela promised to intensify to an even higher level than before. Therefore, I was surprised when I learned that the season 6 and 7 regime of producers, headed by the spry Jeff Freilich, was leaving the series. I heard that the new producers included Michael Filerman and Camille Marchetta. As I understand it, Filerman worked on the first season of "Falcon Crest" and retained producing credit after the first thirteen episodes, but had not been involved with the series since early 1982. My understanding of the situation, from what I've read in the beautifully written and researched "Falcon Crest" fan newsletters produced by the esteemed FalconCrest.org website, was that CBS felt that Filerman should not collect a fee for a show he wasn't working on, and ordered him to take a more active role with the series. Camille Marchetta had never worked on "Falcon Crest" before, but had worked on both "Dallas" and "Dynasty" in its earlier years when both shows were particularly popular. I had some concerns because I felt that Freilich, and his colleagues, did a good job with revitalizing the series in Season 6 and 7. I'm not trying to idealize Freilich at all, because he did make some serious mistakes (such as killing off Laura Johnson's delightful Terry Hartford character at the beginning of Season 6 in order to make room for Kim Novak that year), but overall I can't fault Freilich's choices because, under his command, "Falcon Crest" still gelled.
Eventually, Filerman and Marchetta announced that a new young vixen was being introduced to the series, "Days of Our Lives" starlet Kristian Alfonso as the heretofore unheard of character Pilar Ortega, and that Ana Alicia was leaving the series. I kept an open mind with regards to these changes until I watched the season premiere on October 28, 1988 and was appalled at what Filerman and Marchetta had done to this show. They stripped the series of any sense of humor, slowed the pace down to a snail-like crawl, and forced the Pilar Ortega character down viewers' throats whether they liked it or not. In one episode, Melissa had gone insane and was established as a pariah on the series. Concurrently, Alfonso's Pilar was introduced and was immediately given so much screen-time that more than a few people cracked that "Falcon Crest" had suddenly become "The Pilar Ortega Show." Kristian Alfonso's Pilar Ortega ultimately became the "cousin Oliver" on "Falcon Crest": a character introduced late in the run of an established show whose presence and influence single-handedly destroyed a hit series.
It was apparent while watching Season 8 that neither Filerman nor Marchetta truly understood or appreciated what Melissa Agretti brought to the series. In fact, I recall that in one of the "Falcon Crest" fan newsletters, when Filerman was interviewed about his decision to kill off Melissa, he appeared clueless as to who the character was and how she related to the series as a whole. Since Filerman left "Falcon Crest" after the first 13 episodes on Season 1, and Melissa was introduced in the 14th episode that season, it became apparent that Filerman didn't know who she was because he never bothered to follow the 173 subsequent episodes that featured the character between the time he left the show in early 1982 and when he returned in mid-1988. Filerman and Marchetta made foolish assumptions that, because Pilar was a character from a modest Hispanic family of laborers, and had grown up in a working class environment in the shadow of the wealthy and entitled Melissa Agretti, that audiences would immediately transfer their affections and allegiances from Melissa to Pilar immediately. This demonstrates their degree of arrogance and hubris to assume the audience would stop caring about someone they'd been watching for several years and quickly accept a new character that they had never seen before.
While I am the first person to laud a character for having strength and integrity to overcome a modest background to make a success of their lives, I also like it when a character continues to fascinate and compel me because of their ability to demonstrate their humanity despite their weaknesses and flaws. For all of Melissa Agretti's immaturity, selfishness and ruthless scheming, "Falcon Crest" fans still liked and cared about her because she ultimately had moments of charm, vulnerability, humor, and concern for people that she cared for that redeemed her in their eyes. Ana Alicia's fine work in helping the audience to see Melissa's sympathetic qualities, despite her inherent flaws, went a long way towards building audience interest and compassion for the character. By that point, we had spent 7 years watching Melissa and had grown to care for her. We weren't willing to suddenly transfer our allegiances to this Pilar character, who hadn't earned our loyalty yet. I hated how Melissa was made an outcast and pariah on her own show by Filerman and Marchetta, while Pilar was expected to be admired and respected without having to work for it from the audience. Melissa wasn't even shunned to this degree by the other characters on the series the season before when she, in essence, caused Chase Gioberti's (Robert Foxworth) death in San Francisco Bay. (As I understand it, the decision to eliminate Melissa from the show alarmed the other cast members, who are still close friends with Ana Alicia to this day, and that purportedly co-star Susan Sullivan conferred with the new producers in an attempt to change their mind, an effort which evidently fell on deaf ears.)
What was so bad about the introduction of Pilar into "Falcon Crest" was how she suddenly had a history with almost EVERY character on the series. We were to suddenly understand that she and Lance Cumson (Lorenzo Lamas) were childhood sweethearts, that she was childhood rivals with Melissa, that she and Angela already had an adversarial relationship, and that she had been working for Richard Channing (David Selby) for some time. While I acknowledge that "Falcon Crest" already had a history of introducing new characters who had a built-in back-story with established characters, by the 8th season it was straining credibility to ask us to believe that Pilar had such extensive connections on the show when we had never heard of her before. For instance, Rod Taylor was introduced the previous season as Melissa's long-lost Uncle Frank, but that addition to the show worked beautifully due to Taylor's inherent charm as an actor, as well as the fact that the Frank Agretti character blended easily into the ensemble and made no effort to steal the spotlight from the other cast members the way Pilar did. In contrast to the humor and charm that Ana Alicia brought to "Falcon Crest," Kristian Alfonso gave a stiff, stilted, bland performance as Pilar. I recall in a TV Guide interview how Camille Marchetta alleged that Pilar was meant to be a "younger version of Angela Channing," but Alfonso's uninspired performance quickly put that fanciful and quixotic notion to rest. In actuality, the show already had a character who had been established as a young Angela Channing, someone who had been thoughtlessly dismissed by the Filerman-Marchetta regime, Ana Alicia's Melissa Agretti.
I also didn't like how Filerman and Marchetta eliminated Melissa within the first three episodes of Season 8 by having her lose all of her family and friends, go mentally insane, and then set fire to Falcon Crest so that she could destroy it and die within the flames. The whole thing reflected sloppy and lazy writing, and made no sense from a dramatic perspective. Even though Melissa suffered from mental instability in Season 6, she spent the entire Season 7 making great strides to try and bring sense and stability back into her life. Without a clear impetus for why she retreated back into insanity, her sudden mental and mood swings at the start of Season 8 seemed contrived. Furthermore, it had already been established throughout the series that Melissa Agretti was a devout Roman Catholic. I recall, in Season 6, when Melissa goes to Father Bob (Bob Curtis) for confession, how despondent she became when he refuses to absolve her. This demonstrated the degree to which Melissa took her faith seriously, and was a contributing factor for her first nervous breakdown. So deep are Melissa's religious convictions, that I never believed she would intentionally take her own life, because at the time, as I understand it, suicide would have been considered a sin that would have denied her a Catholic service and burial. The fact that this was ignored by the new writers and producers of the series demonstrates their lack of understanding of the series and of its established characters.
What also troubled me about killing off Melissa was the way it was dramatized on-screen. During the final minutes of the second episode of Season 8, "Farewell My Lovelies," which aired November 4, 1988, Melissa sets fire to Falcon Crest and then goes upstairs to prepare to die. At the beginning of the following episode, "Dust to Dust," which aired November 11, 1988, Lance discovers the fire and rescues an unconscious Melissa from the house before it completely burns to the ground. Melissa remains in a coma as she is rushed to the hospital. She lingers in a coma throughout the first half of the episode until she finally dies of smoke inhalation, without ever regaining consciousness. Melissa's death was dramatized in this manner in order to help set up a lame storyline where Lance would be accused by the police of having murdered Melissa. In so doing, Filerman and Marchetta deprived the audience of a satisfying and dramatic death bed scene for a character that we had followed by that point for over 6 and a half years and had grown to care about.
Moreover, once she had been killed off the series, Filerman and Marchetta did not provide an appropriate level of mourning expressed by the other characters on "Falcon Crest" that one would have expected for someone as important as Melissa. When Chase Gioberti was written out of the series more than a year earlier, the previous regime of producers gave him a dramatic, heroic, and admirable exit, showing him jumping back into San Francisco Bay to try and help rescue other characters who were trapped underwater after Melissa had driven her car into the Bay. In Melissa's instance, her death was handled in a casual and pointless manner that showed little respect to the character, for the show's audience, and for even Ana Alicia herself. As Ana Alicia diplomatically related to Kathleen Sullivan on "CBS This Morning," when she learned of the fate that Filerman and Marchetta had devised for Melissa, "I asked not to be written out in this particular way. I said, 'Please leave the character some dignity.' And, of course, they wrote her out in this particular way! (laugh)."
The Single-Handed Destruction of "Falcon Crest" by Kristian Alfonso's Pilar Ortega
One of the worst instances of both eliminating an established character, and introducing a brand new one, on a long-running series took...
hillplace.blogspot.com
The Single-Handed Destruction of "Falcon Crest" by Kristian Alfonso's Pilar Ortega
One of the worst instances of both eliminating an established character, and introducing a brand new one, on a long-running series took place 25 years ago in 1988 at the start of the 8th Season of the hit prime time soap "Falcon Crest" (1981-90). At the time, I was in High School and "Falcon Crest" was my favorite TV series that year. I enjoyed the fast-paced storylines and wry humor that had been integrated throughout the 6th and 7th seasons of the show. I particularly enjoyed the storyline that had been devised for the series' resident scheming vixen, Melissa Agretti (Ana Alicia) at the end of the 7th season. Having found a legal document in the cliffhanger episode that proved the Agretti family originally owned the land that Falcon Crest was built on, and that Angela Channing's (Jane Wyman) family had cheated the Agrettis out of their rightful heritage decades ago, Melissa sued Angela and won a court ruling that granted her full ownership of the series' titular winery. As Melissa kicked Angela and her family out of their longtime home, and moved onto the property herself, the established matriarch of the Tuscany Valley warned Melissa that "You won, Melissa. But you won't have one night in this house without wondering what I'm up to. And, believe me, I'll be up to something...I'll be back," thus setting the stage for a potentially interesting and exciting storyline for the 8th season.
Over the summer, I breathlessly anticipated what would happen during the 8th season as the rivalry between Melissa and Angela promised to intensify to an even higher level than before. Therefore, I was surprised when I learned that the season 6 and 7 regime of producers, headed by the spry Jeff Freilich, was leaving the series. I heard that the new producers included Michael Filerman and Camille Marchetta. As I understand it, Filerman worked on the first season of "Falcon Crest" and retained producing credit after the first thirteen episodes, but had not been involved with the series since early 1982. My understanding of the situation, from what I've read in the beautifully written and researched "Falcon Crest" fan newsletters produced by the esteemed FalconCrest.org website, was that CBS felt that Filerman should not collect a fee for a show he wasn't working on, and ordered him to take a more active role with the series. Camille Marchetta had never worked on "Falcon Crest" before, but had worked on both "Dallas" and "Dynasty" in its earlier years when both shows were particularly popular. I had some concerns because I felt that Freilich, and his colleagues, did a good job with revitalizing the series in Season 6 and 7. I'm not trying to idealize Freilich at all, because he did make some serious mistakes (such as killing off Laura Johnson's delightful Terry Hartford character at the beginning of Season 6 in order to make room for Kim Novak that year), but overall I can't fault Freilich's choices because, under his command, "Falcon Crest" still gelled.
Eventually, Filerman and Marchetta announced that a new young vixen was being introduced to the series, "Days of Our Lives" starlet Kristian Alfonso as the heretofore unheard of character Pilar Ortega, and that Ana Alicia was leaving the series. I kept an open mind with regards to these changes until I watched the season premiere on October 28, 1988 and was appalled at what Filerman and Marchetta had done to this show. They stripped the series of any sense of humor, slowed the pace down to a snail-like crawl, and forced the Pilar Ortega character down viewers' throats whether they liked it or not. In one episode, Melissa had gone insane and was established as a pariah on the series. Concurrently, Alfonso's Pilar was introduced and was immediately given so much screen-time that more than a few people cracked that "Falcon Crest" had suddenly become "The Pilar Ortega Show." Kristian Alfonso's Pilar Ortega ultimately became the "cousin Oliver" on "Falcon Crest": a character introduced late in the run of an established show whose presence and influence single-handedly destroyed a hit series.
It was apparent while watching Season 8 that neither Filerman nor Marchetta truly understood or appreciated what Melissa Agretti brought to the series. In fact, I recall that in one of the "Falcon Crest" fan newsletters, when Filerman was interviewed about his decision to kill off Melissa, he appeared clueless as to who the character was and how she related to the series as a whole. Since Filerman left "Falcon Crest" after the first 13 episodes on Season 1, and Melissa was introduced in the 14th episode that season, it became apparent that Filerman didn't know who she was because he never bothered to follow the 173 subsequent episodes that featured the character between the time he left the show in early 1982 and when he returned in mid-1988. Filerman and Marchetta made foolish assumptions that, because Pilar was a character from a modest Hispanic family of laborers, and had grown up in a working class environment in the shadow of the wealthy and entitled Melissa Agretti, that audiences would immediately transfer their affections and allegiances from Melissa to Pilar immediately. This demonstrates their degree of arrogance and hubris to assume the audience would stop caring about someone they'd been watching for several years and quickly accept a new character that they had never seen before.
While I am the first person to laud a character for having strength and integrity to overcome a modest background to make a success of their lives, I also like it when a character continues to fascinate and compel me because of their ability to demonstrate their humanity despite their weaknesses and flaws. For all of Melissa Agretti's immaturity, selfishness and ruthless scheming, "Falcon Crest" fans still liked and cared about her because she ultimately had moments of charm, vulnerability, humor, and concern for people that she cared for that redeemed her in their eyes. Ana Alicia's fine work in helping the audience to see Melissa's sympathetic qualities, despite her inherent flaws, went a long way towards building audience interest and compassion for the character. By that point, we had spent 7 years watching Melissa and had grown to care for her. We weren't willing to suddenly transfer our allegiances to this Pilar character, who hadn't earned our loyalty yet. I hated how Melissa was made an outcast and pariah on her own show by Filerman and Marchetta, while Pilar was expected to be admired and respected without having to work for it from the audience. Melissa wasn't even shunned to this degree by the other characters on the series the season before when she, in essence, caused Chase Gioberti's (Robert Foxworth) death in San Francisco Bay. (As I understand it, the decision to eliminate Melissa from the show alarmed the other cast members, who are still close friends with Ana Alicia to this day, and that purportedly co-star Susan Sullivan conferred with the new producers in an attempt to change their mind, an effort which evidently fell on deaf ears.)
What was so bad about the introduction of Pilar into "Falcon Crest" was how she suddenly had a history with almost EVERY character on the series. We were to suddenly understand that she and Lance Cumson (Lorenzo Lamas) were childhood sweethearts, that she was childhood rivals with Melissa, that she and Angela already had an adversarial relationship, and that she had been working for Richard Channing (David Selby) for some time. While I acknowledge that "Falcon Crest" already had a history of introducing new characters who had a built-in back-story with established characters, by the 8th season it was straining credibility to ask us to believe that Pilar had such extensive connections on the show when we had never heard of her before. For instance, Rod Taylor was introduced the previous season as Melissa's long-lost Uncle Frank, but that addition to the show worked beautifully due to Taylor's inherent charm as an actor, as well as the fact that the Frank Agretti character blended easily into the ensemble and made no effort to steal the spotlight from the other cast members the way Pilar did. In contrast to the humor and charm that Ana Alicia brought to "Falcon Crest," Kristian Alfonso gave a stiff, stilted, bland performance as Pilar. I recall in a TV Guide interview how Camille Marchetta alleged that Pilar was meant to be a "younger version of Angela Channing," but Alfonso's uninspired performance quickly put that fanciful and quixotic notion to rest. In actuality, the show already had a character who had been established as a young Angela Channing, someone who had been thoughtlessly dismissed by the Filerman-Marchetta regime, Ana Alicia's Melissa Agretti.
I also didn't like how Filerman and Marchetta eliminated Melissa within the first three episodes of Season 8 by having her lose all of her family and friends, go mentally insane, and then set fire to Falcon Crest so that she could destroy it and die within the flames. The whole thing reflected sloppy and lazy writing, and made no sense from a dramatic perspective. Even though Melissa suffered from mental instability in Season 6, she spent the entire Season 7 making great strides to try and bring sense and stability back into her life. Without a clear impetus for why she retreated back into insanity, her sudden mental and mood swings at the start of Season 8 seemed contrived. Furthermore, it had already been established throughout the series that Melissa Agretti was a devout Roman Catholic. I recall, in Season 6, when Melissa goes to Father Bob (Bob Curtis) for confession, how despondent she became when he refuses to absolve her. This demonstrated the degree to which Melissa took her faith seriously, and was a contributing factor for her first nervous breakdown. So deep are Melissa's religious convictions, that I never believed she would intentionally take her own life, because at the time, as I understand it, suicide would have been considered a sin that would have denied her a Catholic service and burial. The fact that this was ignored by the new writers and producers of the series demonstrates their lack of understanding of the series and of its established characters.
What also troubled me about killing off Melissa was the way it was dramatized on-screen. During the final minutes of the second episode of Season 8, "Farewell My Lovelies," which aired November 4, 1988, Melissa sets fire to Falcon Crest and then goes upstairs to prepare to die. At the beginning of the following episode, "Dust to Dust," which aired November 11, 1988, Lance discovers the fire and rescues an unconscious Melissa from the house before it completely burns to the ground. Melissa remains in a coma as she is rushed to the hospital. She lingers in a coma throughout the first half of the episode until she finally dies of smoke inhalation, without ever regaining consciousness. Melissa's death was dramatized in this manner in order to help set up a lame storyline where Lance would be accused by the police of having murdered Melissa. In so doing, Filerman and Marchetta deprived the audience of a satisfying and dramatic death bed scene for a character that we had followed by that point for over 6 and a half years and had grown to care about.
Moreover, once she had been killed off the series, Filerman and Marchetta did not provide an appropriate level of mourning expressed by the other characters on "Falcon Crest" that one would have expected for someone as important as Melissa. When Chase Gioberti was written out of the series more than a year earlier, the previous regime of producers gave him a dramatic, heroic, and admirable exit, showing him jumping back into San Francisco Bay to try and help rescue other characters who were trapped underwater after Melissa had driven her car into the Bay. In Melissa's instance, her death was handled in a casual and pointless manner that showed little respect to the character, for the show's audience, and for even Ana Alicia herself. As Ana Alicia diplomatically related to Kathleen Sullivan on "CBS This Morning," when she learned of the fate that Filerman and Marchetta had devised for Melissa, "I asked not to be written out in this particular way. I said, 'Please leave the character some dignity.' And, of course, they wrote her out in this particular way! (laugh)."