In his new role on the Tuscany Valley County Board of Supervisors, Chase meets resistance in his efforts to break Angela's grip on county water supplies. When Melissa tells Carlo about her ambitions to control Falcon Crest, Carlo informs his daughter that she faces a powerful rival in Richard Channing, who is rumored to have ties to the C.I.A. and the British Parliament. Richard shows his ruthlessness by firing The Globe's longtime editor-in-chief, Herb Talmadge, who was only a year from retirement and a pension. After Angela tells Richard that he looks nothing like his father Douglas, Richard explodes after she leaves, vowing to ruin her.

When pressured by Richard to sell his winery holdings, Carlo spits in Richard's face, then confronts Angela about Lance's abusiveness toward Melissa and vows that Angela will never get Carlo's land through his daughter's marriage to Lance. Chase wants to distribute Falcon Crest's wine in Canada through a distributor other than Kleeger, which gets a big discount on their wine. Angela secretly owns Kleeger, and she charges Lance with keeping Chase from finding out. To counter Chase's efforts on the County Board of Supervisors to break her monopoly on the valley's water and distribute it to other growers, Angela claims her water is tainted. In turn, Chase orders another test of Falcon Crest's water supply that shows it not to be tainted. Cole gets into a fight with Carlo, who later telephones to apologize to Cole and invite him over to see Melissa. Not knowing that Carlo has leveled a pistol to his own head, Cole arrives to discover Carlo's body and becomes the prime suspect in Carlo's mu

Angela threatens Nick Hogan not to vote with Chase against her at the county supervisor meeting. If Nick votes to redistribute Falcon Crest's water to other vineyards, Angela warns that she won't be buying the $17,000 worth of pipes she was going to buy from him. Nick casts his decisive vote with Chase, and Angela warns Chase that he will come to regret his moment of glory. Emma disappears, secretly giving Chase the voting proxy to her twenty percent share of The Globe before she leaves -- the same proxy Angela hoped would give her control of the newspaper's board of directors. Richard prints a sensational article suggesting Cole murdered Carlo Agretti. When Richard asks Melissa to sell her the Agretti house, she suspects that Richard could have had a hand in her father's death. Cole is arrested for Carlo's murder after Cole's fingerprints are found on the statuette used to kill Carlo.

Richard schemes to buy a piece of county property earmarked for a park, on which he plans to build a memorial to Douglas Channing on one small part and plant a vineyard on the rest. While Chase vehemently opposes the plan, Richard plants a bomb in Nick's truck and successfully intimidates Nick to vote his way at the board of supervisors meeting. Leaving her prescribed bed rest in order to win Cole back from Katherine Demery, Melissa collapses and is taken to the hospital, where she delivers an unhealthy, premature baby, whom she names Joseph Angelo Cumson, after Lance's great-great-grandfather. After Cole moves out of Katherine Demery's house, he moves back into his parents' house.