Falcon Crest enters its seventh season minus longtime series regular Robert Foxworth, whose character, Chase Gioberti, had perished while saving his infant son from the sinister machinations of a crooked private eye. As a result, Chase's aunt and reluctant business partner Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) regains her late nephew's share of the prosperous Falcon Crest winery. Meanwhile, ruthless newspaper publisher Richard Channing (David Selby), previously assumed to be the illegitimate son of Angela's ex-husband Douglas but now revealed as Angela's biological son, enters into yet another unholy business arrangement with the Underworld, this time represented by "The Thirteen", a covert organization, headed by a man named Rosemont (Roscoe Lee Browne), which seeks to ruin the world's economy for its own profit. This does not rest well with Richard's new wife, Chase's widow Maggie (Susan Sullivan), who has every reason to suspect that Richard's new business associates are up to no good. And in a separate development, having rejoined the cast of Falcon Crest after a three-year absence during the previous season, Chase and Maggie's troubled daughter Victoria (Jamie Rose) is promptly kidnapped by an Eastern European white slavery ring. Elsewhere, in her ongoing efforts to obtain Richard's share of Falcon Crest, Angela tries to persuade her prodigal nephew Lance (Lorenzo Lamas) to return home, but Lance wants no part of either Angela or his ex-wife Melissa (Ana Alicia), who has by now aligned herself with Dan Fixx (Brett Cullen), Lance's would-be successor as heir to the Channing millions. Meanwhile, Angela conspires with a movie special-effects artist to rid herself of Melissa by convincing the girl that her house is haunted! Perhaps as a form of divine punishment for this and her many other misdeeds, Angela must resign herself to the fact that her daughter Emma (Margaret Ladd) is currently running a call-girl business, and intends to make a movie about her new career. As the season rushes to its cliffhanger finale, Richard virtually signs his own death warrant by offering to testify against "The Thirteen" before the senate, striking a deal with his would-be assassin to sacrifice his life in exchange for the safety of Angela and her family. And after Melissa digs up hitherto unknown legal papers proving that she and she alone owns Falcon Crest, Angela is tossed out on the street!
