Product Description

Brothers & Sisters returns for a third season following the California-based Walker family through the complicated maze of American life today. The compelling one hour drama series is about a collection of five enmeshed and somewhat damaged adult siblings and their strong but passionately devoted mother. Brothers & Sisters The Complete Third Season is the drama that every family can relate to, the truth of tfamily, they are real, warm and dysfunctional.

Bonus Features Include: Interview with Sally Field and Patricia Wettig, cast visit with a real life family winery in Ojai, California, cast and crew hijinx on location, bloopers, deleted scenes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1088 in DVD
• Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2009-09-01
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 6
• Running time: 1032 minutes

Amazon.com
Season 3 of ABC's terrific ensemble drama Brothers and Sisters finds the pampered Walker family of Pasadena in fine neurotic form. Happily, the art of deep in-person conversation (and confrontation) is alive and well among the Walkers and their extended family, which continues the welcome echoes of one of its ancestor shows, thirtysomething.As it turns out, the Walkers have a lot to talk about. The sharkish Holly (a fearless and delightful Patricia Wettig) is a much bigger character this season, and that raises Brothers and Sisters' complexity level accordingly. Holly, mistress of the late William Walker (Tom Skerritt, in flashbacks), is now running the Walker family business, Ojai Foods, which results in extreme tension for Walker's widow, Nora. Sally Field continues to bring great depth and nuance to her performance as Nora--a not-so-traditional housewife facing her late husband's betrayals (and the viewer learns of more this season), yet finding that adversity really does make her stronger.

The rest of the stellar ensemble includes Rob Lowe as the uber-ambitious senator husband of Kitty, played by Calista Flockhart, who shows welcome restraint. Sarah (Rachel Griffiths) contends with her new single life by plunging into a new startup venture--and finding she's pretty darn good at it. The three Walker brothers include Kevin (Matthew Rhys), Tommy (Balthazar Getty) and recovered junkie vet Justin (Dave Annable), the last of whom is delighted to discover that the comely Rebecca (Emily VanCamp) is not actually a blood relative. Much of season 3's sexiness comes from this new, hot couple. And there's drama with Tommy, too--which will change the Walkers' lives forever. The six-disc set is what such sets should be: a bounty of great extras that the committed Brothers and Sisters fan will not want to miss. These include deleted scenes, silly bloopers, and wonderful interviews with Field and Wettig, as well as a mini-doc on a real-life food and wine company based in Ojai, Calif. The whole experience adds up to some grand sibling revelry. --A.T. Hurley

Customer Reviews

Calista Flockhart is Emmy worthy
The accolades might always go to Sally Field and Rachel Griffiths (both terrific).

But in the third season of the series, Calista Flockhart goes deep and gives the most nuanced performance of the year. She deserved an Emmy for this season (and they snubbed her). The third season had it's share of mistakes, but Flockhart was a joy to watch. It's so good to have her back on television.

The web continues to tangle with no end in sight
Brothers and Sisters feels like an amalgamation of numerous television shows all blended up and mixed into one huge hodgepodge story. With some parts Army Wives, West Wing, Arrested Development and many others, Brothers and Sisters captures a lot of their elements but rarely ever delivers the part that made them worthwhile. The show may fail in the ingenuity of its story and how it tells it, but in terms of casts few shows on right now can match its star power. It may not be the best thing you've ever watched, but it has crafted a deeply tangled mess for itself that the writers are clearly enjoying detangling and retangling (which isn't even a word) all over again.

It's not that the life of any one person in the Walker family is all that complicated, but just that there are so many people involved that even if they all led lives of simplicity, the sheer volume would be bound to create some conflict either way. So when you toss in Justin, a drug-addicted veteran (Dave Annable), and his new romantic interest (Emily VanCamp), who was until last season presumed to be the lovechild of his father by another woman (Patricia Wettig), things are bound to get interesting. Or maybe you'd prefer the addition of Kitty (Calista Flockheart) and her ex-presidential nominee husband (Rob Lowe) fighting hard for the Republican conservative agenda even after hiring Kitty's [...] brother (Matthew Rhys) whose dreams of partnership at his firm fell through, perhaps due to his relationship with his life partner (Luke Macfarlane)? You don't think the show's plot is burdened enough? Then let's add some conflict in the family business as Sarah (Rachel Griffiths) resigns after firing her brother (Balthazar Getty) from his position as the company's lead counsel. All of this happens as the matriarch Nora (Sally Field) struggles to find her calling after leaving the family business with the encouragement of the family's last remaining sage Saul (Ron Rifkin), whose coming out of the closet hasn't affected him professionally but rather personally in his family. The big seldom-happy family discover a few new surprises in the third season, but none so important as the identity of a new potential member of the Walker family.

The cast is simply a powerhouse. You have stars here who have headlined past programs and still others who lead healthy careers on the silver screen. Seeing them congregated in one place leads you to believe that they all saw something in Brothers and Sisters upon first reading the script - and they were right. For all its twists and turns there is a stark feeling of family pervading it all. Their conflicts and celebrations feel appropriately weighted with everything that's come in seasons before and yet petty disputes can still occur unfettered. It isn't bloated, but there is still a sense that the writers are grasping at too much and consequently some of the show's story is being underdeveloped. With that said, for having so much going on at once, never does it feel like any one character is taking the spotlight or that any are being left out; everyone's presence is felt, it's just that none are really allowed to gain the momentum needed to become dramatic bulwarks to pad the series' vitality.

DVD Extra Features:

You'll find audio commentaries on a few episodes as well as deleted scenes, but neither is all that illuminating. As if to research the season's new direction for the Ojai business, the cast takes a trip to a family-run vineyard for the grand tour. They laugh, they drink, they make merry - and you can live it vicariously through your TV set. There's an introspective piece by the matrons of Brothers and Sisters (Field and Wettig) wherein they discuss their roles and how their characters have developed over the seasonal arcs. Finally, there's a bit of dual-action blooper reel business going on: there's the official gag reel for outtakes and then a second little featurette about the cast and the pranks they pull on the set.

The show has only gotten better by twisting itself into loops, but in doing so it sacrificed depth for content. For some the trade-off was a good one, for others not so much. Where do you fall?

THE BEST
BEST SHOW ON TV...HAS ALL THAT YOU WANT AND THE ACTING IS GREAT AND GOD LOVE SALLY FIELD SHE IS BACK AND GREAT. THE WHOLE CAST IS.. LOVE THIS SHOW.. LOOK FOR A FEW MORE YEARS AND MORE TAPES OF THIS SHOW.