Brothers & Sisters The Complete Third Season Review

• Release Date: September 1st, 2009
• Publisher: ABC Video
• Price: $37.99 on Amazon
• Rating: TV 14
• Run Time: 1032 Minutes
• Special Features: Commentaries, Deleted Scenes, Bloopers, The Mothers of Brothers and Sisters, The Ojai Experience, In Between Scenes
• Starring: Calisita Flockhart, Sally Fields, Rob Lowe, Rachel Griffiths, Ron Rifkin
• Genre: Character Drama

The Walker clan is back for another season. Just in time for the fourth season which begins on September 27th, the complete third season of Brothers & Sisters was released this Tuesday on DVD. While Brothers & Sisters has never been a great show, it has been a good show. The third season DVD isn’t great but overall a pretty good DVD set.

If you haven’t seen the first two seasons of Brothers & Sisters I would recommend that you pick up the first two seasons before looking into the third season. Brothers & Sisters is a pretty serialized drama and you will be missing out on quite a bit if you start watching the series in the third season.  With that said if you haven’t seen the first two seasons I would recommend skipping the next paragraph since it might contain spoilers on the first two seasons.

In season three the Walkers continue to run into troubles in typical Walker fashion. One Walker goes off the deep ending putting the family and Ojai Foods at risk. Another Walker enters the fold as the family tries tracking down their long lost sibling Ryan. Kitty and Robert try to adopt a baby but problems ensue. Some relationships grow while others fall apart. With all this happening Nora tries to keep the Walker clan together while also trying to create her own identity seperate from her children.

Compared to the first and second season, Brothers & Sisters has been very consistent show throughout. Never a great show but a good show. Brothers & Sisters has some good character development as well as some humor interspersed throughout the drama. In season three the show started well, hit a little snag in the middle, and was solid the final couple episodes of the season.

Brothers & Sisters’ special features are just okay. You can’t complain about the quantity since you get six different special features which probably equate to three or four hours of content. That is not bad at all. The problem is that some of the special features aren’t that great. Some are worth watching but some are probably only for diehard fans. Overall the special features are not worthy of a purchase by themselves but should provide fans some enjoyment. Here are more details on which special features you will get in this DVD set.

• Commentaries: Overall you get three commentaries on episodes “Troubled Waters (1)” (Episode 16), “Troubled Waters (2)” (Episode 17), and “Mexico” (Episode 24). They are not bad but on a DVD release like this you would expect more than three commentaries.
• Bloopers: A pretty typical blooper reel that is five minutes long. Matthew Rhys (Kevin) has the best bloopers and is pretty funny in this feature. I have seen better but also much worse blooper reels.
• Deleted Scenes: Overall there are 20 deleted scenes but most of them are very short. Some are even as short as half a minute. I really didn’t find any of the scenes to be must watches.
• The Mothers of Brothers & Sisters: A ten minute look at the mothers on Brothers & Sisters. The cast and crew compare what character their actual mother is most like. Overall I think this was probably the best special feature in the DVD set. It was worth watching since you find out more about the cast and the characters of Nora, Holly, Sarah, and Kitty.
• The Ojai Experience: A thirteen minute look at a family owned winery. Because the show has its own family owned winery (Walker Landing) some of the cast goes on a tour of a real family winery. Cast members that make the trip include Ron Rifkin (Saul), Matthew Rhys (Kevin), Patricia Wettig (Holly), Dave Annable (Justin), and Ken Olin (David, and also a producer and director on the show). Overall I found this special feature to be pretty boring overall. I really don’t care about wine but people who are more interested in wine than me should get more out of it than I did.
• In-Between Scenes: A six minute look at what the cast does to fool around between filming scenes. I thought this special feature would be pretty good but it disappointed me. It had its moments but there are some parts that could have been cut out.

Overall the third season of Brothers & Sisters was solid just like the first two seasons. It never is fantastic but it really doesn’t disappoint either. It is probably one of the more solid shows on television. People who never have watched the show before should check out the first two seasons before picking up the third. Fans of Brothers & Sisters should definitely look into purchasing the third season as long as they plan on re-watching the episodes and not just to see the special features.