Brothers & Sisters the Complete Third Season DVD
Posted by Michael Weyer on 09.06.2009
The third season amps up the melodrama but the excellent cast still makes it fun to watch.
Brothers & Sisters: The Complete Third Season
Six Disc DVD Set
ABC Studios
1032 Minutes
For a series that had little expectations, Brothers & Sisters has emerged as one of ABC’s biggest success stories. The amazing cast had brought about a great show that mixes comedy and drama equally while still coming off pretty real. As the first season had a rough start and the second was cut shorter by the writer’s strike, this is the first chance fans have to enjoy a full season of the Walkers in all their glory. The results, however, are a mixed bag. While the cast still enjoys things and the writers are able to give good stories, this season comes out a bit more dour than usual. The real drama was happening outside the show as photos emerged of star Balthazar Getty having an affair with Sienna Miller. This naturally led to tension on set and a storyline to push out his character. Still, for all its flaws, the show does manage to provide some good drama with a light touch as well with its excellent cast helping things along.
The Show
Change is in the air for the Walkers as the season starts. When a deal to try and save the company fell through, the family was forced to allow Holly Harper (Patricia Wettig) to merge Ojai with the winery she and Tommy (Getty) owned, with Holly becoming CEO. In protest, Saul (Ron Rifkin) quit while also dealing with coming out of the closet. Sarah (Rachel Griffiths), harried by being out of work and handling her kids, decides to invest in a startup Internet company, helping its two well-meaning but untested founders. Kitty (Calista Flockhart) and Robert (Rob Lowe) handle their marriage as they decide to adopt a child from a surrogate and Kitty writes a book detailing her life in politics…which also includes discussing her family at length. Kevin (Matthew Rhys) deals with being married himself to Scotty (Luke McFarlane) and becoming Robert’s assistant. He thus learns how Robert is planning to run for governor, a secret he’s keeping from Kitty. Having discovered last year she wasn’t really a Walker, Rebecca (Emily Vancamp) and Justin (Dave Annabelle) begin a relationship. Feeling Holly isn’t running the company right, Tommy concocts a scheme to remove her from power, not seeing how it could destroy the company outright. Through it all, Nora (Sally Field) tries to keep everyone balanced while renovating an old house to become a non-profit center. The big news is the discovery of Ryan Lafferty (Luke Grimes), the illegitimate son of family patriarch William, whose arrival naturally throws everyone for a loop.
With such a broad cast and so many stories, the series is able to provide some good entertainment. It’s amazing how realistic this family really is as the scenes of dinners where people have six different conversations at once is just like my own family. They gel so well, you can believe they’re related, equal parts bickering and helping each other, ready to bring up old history to make a point but still able to pull together in a time of crisis. The best parts of the season are the always disastrous Walker gatherings: A beachside condo is home to arguments while a garage sale brings up old memories, not all pleasant. The dinners are a sight to behold with one having a social worker as a guest gauging the family with Nora accidentally lacing the food with hot peppers; another has Dave Foley as a quirky guy from AA Justin tries to set up with Saul; and the most dramatic, as Ryan is invited over just as Nora finds out what Tommy’s been up to with Ojai, leading to an ugly row. Each one comes off pretty wild and fun, enhanced by the fact the Walkers love to drink.
The individual stories are good such as when Nora has a fling with her handsome architect only to discover he’s married (“I’m Holly Harper!”) but when it turns out the man and his wife have an “open” relationship, Nora hits the brakes. Field is able to balance out the wild material, Nora still prone to meddling in her children’s lives but you can tell it’s out of love and her frustration at how they keep getting into messes makes you empathize with her. Her plot of putting together a non-profit medical center is interesting and fun when she drags the guys into helping her renovate the house themselves with predictably chaotic results. But Field also sells the dramatic moments as well, the pain of when Ryan reveals more of William’s dirty past with Fields openly screaming in a field how much she hates her late husband. Better is when Tommy’s actions come to light and Nora first strikes at him verbally and physically but then tries to help him because he’s still her son. Whatever the situation, Fields is always great and helps anchor the rest of the cast and the material.
Flockhart and Lowe continue their good jobs as Kitty and Robert face some problems in their marriage. Lowe is believably as Robert as he wants to continue his political career while Kitty wants to be more than just a politician’s wife. However, there are conflicts such as when Robert kills an interview Kitty was to have with a magazine and of course the big two-parter where Robert chooses their surrogate going into labor to announce his run for governor only to suffer a heart attack. Even despite that, he wants to continue the campaign which puts stress on Kitty to flirt with a man she meets at the park. The two actors are able to carry it off well, making you see how each of them has a point in how they feel and makes it harder to take their inevitable breakdown as they mesh so well.
Griffiths is good as the harried Sarah, putting up with the chaos of her own life while trying to establish some direction as well. She’s excited at first about the Internet company until she finds the two guys are basically college kids working out of their cramped apartment. But she still does her best with it and there’s a nice episode in which Steven Weber returns as Sarah’s former flame to try and help out as the actress always gives the role a nice humorous touch. Rhys continues to be the sardonic Kevin, scoffing at most of the insanity around him but also trying to help Robert out. He gets some great lines and reactions to the others but also shows a tender side with Scotty. For Getty, Tommy has always been overlooked among the characters and his attempts to gain control of the company form a huge plotline. However, the actor doesn’t seem well-suited for it and one suspects the backstage drama affected him as it almost seems like he wants to get this out of the way and off the show. The attempts to justify his actions just come off whining although the final episode does redeem him a bit.
I was one of the show’s fans who didn’t like the change of Rebecca to not being a Walker as she fit in with everyone so well. However, Vancamp and Annabelle do have a great dynamic on screen and they’re believable handling this complicated relationship. Wettig has the nice direction of Holly wanting to do her best despite the fact the family always treats her like an outsider and enemy. She does come off scheming at times when Tommy’s working against her but then, he did start it and she’s fighting back the best way she knows how. She does get a nice scene when Saul tells her about William sleeping with another woman to produce Ryan and Holly suddenly realizes how it must have felt for Nora to find out about her. She and Vancamp are totally believable as mother and daughter from supportive talks to arguments. Also helping is real-life husband Ken Olin as Rebecca’s dad who wants to get Holly back. Rifkin himself deals with Saul settling into retirement but still helping the family and gets great stuff like Nora and he arguing about William’s past sins and Saul’s complicity in them. As the newcomer, Grimes seems ill at ease but then, that’s the point of the character, that he never even knew his mom had an affair and his dad isn’t his real dad. The attraction between him and Rebecca is a bit contrived but that’s thankfully dropped quickly. The character improves later in the season as it comes out he has his own agenda for getting close to the family, promising major drama for next season.
While it may have some slow parts and a bit more melodrama than usual, the series still sparkles with some nice humor and some good storylines. But as ever, it’s the cast who makes it all work, elevating every scene (especially the great family gatherings) higher than just the writing and form one of the most believable families on television. They may be dysfunctional but they’re always great to watch.
Rating: 8.0 out of 10.0
Video: Widescreen 1:78:1, enhanced for 16X9 televisions. The picture can be grainy at times but satisfactory with both outdoor and indoor scenes clear enough.
Rating: 8.0 out of 10.0
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, always pretty clear with both the dialogue and music. Subtitles are in French, English and Spanish with subtitles for commentary tracks as well.
Rating: 9.0 out of 10.0
Bonus Features:
Three episodes come with audio commentaries: The two-part “Troubled Waters” with Rob Lowe, Matthew Rhys and executive producer Monica Owusu-Breen and the season finale “Mexico,” with Ken Olin, Owusu-Breen and producer Alison Schapker. The first tracks are pretty lively with Rhys and Lowe talking about the challenges of the on-set stuff, especially Lowe with Robert’s heart attack and how to properly work it. There’s a fun thing where we see Field running through the hospital and they joke about just using footage of her from ER. Lowe cracks about the dinner scenes being like “the Bataan Death march of shooting” and Rhys suggests the show has single-handedly kept the wine industry of California going for three years. Olin gets props from all who say it’s great how he and Wettig work their real-life relationship into their performances with the revelation that Wettig talked to Olin in private before an argument scene, urging him to really let loose on her which helped the scene out. They point out how the show never has any “previously on” stuff at the start so they have to work harder to pull viewers in at the start and joke that “only 24 uses cell phones on screen more than we do.” They’re talkative through the first part but more quiet in the second, noting how it’s easy to get pulled into the power of the episode, repeating a lot of “I cried watching rushes of this” comments.
The finale commentary is a bit drier, more about the actual shooting on a backlot and creating the Mexican town. They do highlight the great “charades” scene and how the actors made it work and note how no one on the show seems able to stand up to the Walkers but just gets sucked into their world. Sally Field is credited with coming up with a lot of the Nora material herself and they also note how Griffiths was quite pregnant by the time the episode was shot and the tricks hiding it. The track is a bit annoying as they discuss how a lot of stuff with Ryan and Saul is setup for next season but still fun.
ABC Starter Kit is an feature originally shown online that gives a nice recap of the first two seasons to bring new viewers up to speed.
The Ojai Experience (12:44) has producer Sparky Hawes bringing Rhys, Wettig, Annabelle and Rifkin on a trip to a real family-owned winery in Ojai, California. It’s more interesting to wine enthusiasts as they tour the place, seeing how it’s all created and put together (Wettig cracking about the classic I Love Lucy episode when she sees a vat of grapes) and having a good time. It’s interesting hearing Rhys in his natural Australian accent and Annabelle cracks about being able to drink wine for real as his character on the show is a recovering addict. It’s a nice bit showing how well the show does research.
In-Between Scenes (6:35) just shows the cast doing some behind-the-scenes fun during shootings. The idea is showing a scene from the show and then cutting to the cast having fun like Robert and Kevin squaring off at a garage sale and then the actors playing with punching robots. The best part is Dave Foley touring the Walker family house, cracking about how nice it is and wanting to stay as “I’m in between lean-tos” complete with photos of them. He elevates the nice little feature.
The Mothers of Brothers & Sisters (10:18) has the cast, writers and producers discussing the mothers of the show. Nora is naturally the main focus with several cast members saying they see their own mother in the character and Field really does act like one on set wanting to help everyone out. They nicely show the differences in motherhood between Nora and Holly, each trying their best and the hint Holly really is a bit jealous of how Nora makes it all work. Sarah and Kitty are also discussed with Griffiths explaining how she always tries to make Sarah real, not a model or a cartoon but down to Earth while Flockhart talks about how it is having Kitty finally be a mom and realizing how hard it all is. A great feature that reminds you how each character is, in one form or another, like your own mom.
There are nineteen deleted scenes spread out among the six discs, most obviously cut for time and not too much. There are some nice ones though such as Kitty meeting a reporter and discussing the challenges of being a politician’s wife and Holly summing up the audience’s own feelings on how the Walkers can be so seductive and pull people in. The blooper reel shows the cast having more fun on set and how well they work together.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10.0
The 411: While the drama became a bit too soap at times, the cast is still able to make the series excellent to watch and pull you into the characters and their troubles. The extras flesh things out and show how the cast really has fun behind the scenes, making this a family worth knowing, warts and all.
