Brothers & Sisters is all about a family dealing with what life gives them. After the passing of William Walker, patriarch of the Walker household and founder of Ojai Foods, one of the regions most successful produce distributors, his family is forced to come together and try their best to move on. With William gone, his five grown kids all do their best to make sure their mother, Nora, copes with the loss. What they don’t realize is just how much they too need the support. For more details about this show, please refer to The DVD Lounge’s reviews of the complete first season and the complete second season.
After last seasons woes when it came to pregnancies, Kitty and Robert are looking into adoption options. Leading to Kitty basically child proofing every single thing in the house. Kevin, vying to be made a partner at his prestigious law firm, is soon met with a choice of either waiting it out or becoming Robert’s new press secretary. Justin and Rebecca are slowly building on their relationship after the events from last season. Issues do arise when Justin has problems opening up about his time overseas, and when the inevitable Walkers versus Holly moments pop up – which is quite regularly.
Speaking of which, Tommy Sarah and Saul are all at their wits end at one point or another this season when it comes to the family business and Holly, who helped keep them out of foreclosure last season but gained a large part of the ownership. Leading to major decisions being made by all three. Nora, looking for something to do with all of her free time takes up a charitable cause, but things get interesting when an old family friend and now world renowned architect pops into town offering up his services free of charge. All this while Nora, Sarah and the others are still trying to figure out the identity of William’s other kid.
At one point Justin makes a passing reference to just how much has happened to the Walker’s in only a years time. One can’t help but feel the same way for the series in general. To look back at the first season and see just how far all of these characters have come and evolved over the run of the series is eye opening. And the subtlety in how those changes occurred over time equally so.
Everything in the show has been improved upon in one way or another. Be it the evolution of how the stories are crafted and how comfortable the writers now seem to be with taking chances with the format and expectations, to actors being given more to work with and expand their characters through performance, to even subtle changes in things like lighting and direction.
Having said all that, there were still a few points where it felt like things took a slight stumble and most of those revolve around the continued search for the long lost walker, now known as Ryan. Not only do they have to makes the characters practically bring the kid into their tangled web by force. While I can certainly understand what they were going for and how a guy in his position would have feelings of anger, he’s written in such a way that one sometimes wonders why they didn’t write him twirling a mustache into the scripts. Almost as if he’s a ticking time bomb that is going to feel exactly like the Oliver character during the first season of The O.C.
All that aside, Brothers & Sisters is still one of few shows I can’t wait to catch up on when the DVDs get released. Season three doesn’t disappoint when it comes to bringing the laughs and tears that made this show a must watch since the beginning. After gushing about this series for two seasons straight now, I’m not sure how else to say that this is an absolutely wonderful show. This newest season is yet another collection of episodes that continue their tradition of quality entertainment.
All 24 episodes from season three are spread out over six discs in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The image remains sharp and clean, with no issues of color bleeding or noticeable edge enhancement. Video compression does a good job of maintaining the level of detail in the frame, with rich warm colors and noticeable texture never appearing smudged or poorly reproduced. Also included is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround audio track which for the most part remains a front heavy mix.
The season includes audio commentaries on three episodes: “Troubled Waters, Part 1″ and “Troubled Waters, Part 2″ with actors Rob Lowe and Matthew Rhys & executive producer Monica Owusu-Breen; and the season finale, “Mexico”, featuring executive producers Alison Schapker, Monica Owusu-Breen, and Ken Olin. The two parter is a good listen to hear about the expansion of Rob’s character during the season. While the finale has the producers talking a lot about the season as a whole.
The Ojai Experience – (12:45) – Follows Ken Olin, Ron Rifkin, Dave Annable, Patricia Wettig, Matthew Rhys, and co-producer Linda Hawes as they travel down to a real family owned vineyard in southern California. It’s more of a documentation of their trip and experience there than an intimate look into the process of actually running a small family owned business.
In-Between Scenes – (6:35) Is a quick little featurette added in for a few god laughs, mostly covering how the cast and crew keeps busy on set. We get a sense of how they all spend their time between takes doing stuff like pull-up contests or heated Rock’em Sock’em Robots matches. But the real scene stealer is the second half where Dave Foley, of Kids in the Hall and Newsradio fame, goes on his own little tour of the set.
The Mothers of Brothers & Sisters – (10:18) Is probably the weakest extra in the bunch. It’s mostly about the cast and producers talking on camera about how Nora and Holly relate to their own mothers. While to the best of my recollection there has yet to be a special feature dedicated to the mothers of the show in this way before, it feels like most of them have gone down this path time and time again.
Deleted Scenes – (19 scenes, 18:39 total) For the most part these scenes are all left out of their respected episodes for obvious reasons. The majority are 30 second snippets that were cut for good reason and most likely to keep the running times tight, but there are handful of extended scenes that help resolve a couple minor questions left unanswered.
Last up is a Bloopers and Outtakes (5:03) reel.
While there are certainly some things that didn’t quite work as well as some may have hoped, the fact that each episode follows over a dozen characters and storylines, it minimizes having to trudge through the parts that might not be for you. After receiving this DVD set in the mail I some how wound up watching the entire run of 24 episodes over the span of a weekend. It’s that addicting.
ABC Studios presents Brothers & Sisters: The Complete Third Season. Created by Jon Robin Baitz. Starring Calista Flockhart, Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths, Rob Lowe, Patricia Wettig, Matthew Rhys, Balthazar Getty, Dave Annable, Emily VanCamp. Running time: 1032 minutes. Rated: TV-14. Released on DVD: September 1, 2009. Available at Amazon.
