Brothers and Sisters: The Complete Third Season
Starring: Calisita Flockhart, Sally Fields, Rob Lowe, Rachel Griffiths, Ron RifkinStudio: ABC Video
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC
Running Time: 1032 minutes
DVD Release: September 1st 2009
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DVD Review
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
User Reviews
Calista Flockhart is Emmy worthy - Rating: 5/5
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 BEST - Rating: 5/5
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.
I like the show's ambitions but increasingly find the characters and stories to be less and less interesting - Rating: 4/5
BROTHERS AND SISTERS has continued through its three seasons to be a consistently interesting series, but also one that has rarely truly surprised me. The vast majority of episodes has something of the feel of a formula to them. In fact, the writers have obviously become so aware of the formula that they even verged on the edge of self-parody. The forumla is familiar to anyone who has watched the show: one member of the Walker family confesses a secret to another member. Somehow or other the possessor of the secret leaks it to another or someone guesses the secret. Within seconds 6 or 7 or 8 people know what was supposed to be an exclusive secret between just two. Once a show gets to the point where they begin to parody themselves on this, you can guess that as a device that it has become overused. And that was certainly the case on BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
I have to confess that this is a show that I've often been conflicted over. On the one hand, it is a character-based serial drama, which is far and away my favorite kind of TV series. All my absolutely favorite shows, like BUFFY and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and VERONICA MARS and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, have been character-based serial dramas. And my complaint about many shows is that they either are not sufficiently character-based (the STARGATES and many other Sci-fi shows, for instance) or not sufficiently serial (my main complaint with GOSSIP GIRL in its second season, in which its story arcs shrank to two to three episodes). So in theory BROTHERS AND SISTERS should be my kind of show. Furthermore, the show has an excellent cast. Many cite Sally Field as a favorite, though I have to say that her character quickly gets on my nerves. In fact, this is the case with many of the characters on the show. I love Rachel Griffiths, but I'm not terribly attached to her character Sarah. Ditto Matthew Rhys, who is a very fine actor, but whose character Kevin has always struck me as far too gruff to be especially likable. (On the other hand, in debates on boards about which actors on TV from England or Australia or similar countries have the best American accents, I often argue that Griffiths and Rhys have the best adopted accents on TV.) If Kevin is too gruff, I find Balthazar Getty's Tommy to be too grumpy. And Dave Annable's Justin is too sensitive. And Calista Flockhart's Kitty is just too spineless. And so on and so forth. And Patricia Wettig's Holly Harper is one of my least favorite characters on TV. In short, I just dislike many of the characters. So while the show is a character-based serial, I find that I just don't care about the development of the characters. I do like Emily VanCamp's Rebecca (and I hope that she remains the good person that she has been shown to be in the first three seasons -- I like putting characters through the wringer, but not by crushing their moral backbone) and love Ron Rifkin's Saul, who has always to my mind been an underutilized character. I vaguely enjoy each episode of the show, though at the same time I'm aware that I don't much care what happens to any of the character (except Rebecca and Saul).
So, on the one hand I respect the format of this show and like that we see characters change and evolve over time. On the other hand, these are far from my favorite group of characters on TV and I find many of the individual episodes quite formulaic. Contrast this with a show like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, where I both love the format and adore the characters. Another interesting contrast is GOSSIP GIRL, where I like the characters more than those on BROTHERS AND SISTERS, but increasingly dislike the format of the show (I'm convinced that the CW imagines that if GOSSIP GIRL maintains story arcs that last more than a couple of episodes, the viewers will find the show too challenging and will abandon it -- which would be strange given that GG is in fact a very low rated show with fewer viewers than any "buzzworthy" show on TV -- if they lengthened the story arcs they might actually attract more mature viewers). I'll probably continue to watch BROTHERS AND SISTERS in Season Four. But it definitely is not must-see TV for me and if the time came when I felt that I had to give up a show or two in order to find time for other things, it would be one of the first shows I would think about sacrificing.
One of the best shows - Rating: 5/5
This is one of the best shows on television today! This show is honest, and the characters are some of the best on television. There is something in it for everyone, you can easily relate to any of the characters...but this set..you'll love it!!!
I Love Love Love This Show!!!!! - Rating: 5/5
I enjoy watching this show weekly! A typical family with issues good and bad yet alot of love for each other.....and yes....alot of wine too!
