Product Details

• Actors: David Boreanaz, Charisma Carpenter, Alexis Denisof, J. August Richards, Amy Acker
• Directors: Bill L. Norton, David Greenwalt, David Grossman, Frederick King Keller, James A. Contner
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 6
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: February 10, 2004
• Run Time: 990 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000TEW8C
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #41,340 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Drama > Television > Angel

• For more information about "Angel - Season Three" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

• This is item 3 in The Angel Series.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In the third season of Angel, the titular vampire with a soul was forced to stand alone thanks to the (temporary) death of his beloved Buffy and her show's move to a new network, with no crossover between the two allowed. He returns from seeking peace in a demon-haunted monastery to find the L.A. Angel Investigations team fighting supernatural crime in his absence. Fred is still haunted by the nightmare dimension from which they rescued her; Cordelia's visions get ever more painful and debilitating. The schemes of the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart become every more imaginative and dragon lady Lilah Morgan becomes even more of an enemy when lusting after Angel. Unbelievably, Darla, Angel's vampire sire and lover, turns up, pregnant with his child and is tortured by inexplicable motherly feelings as well as a raging thirst for human blood.

For a few episodes things go pretty well--but Angel's enemies, both those he has made in his quest for redemption and those he made when he was unadulterated evil, are still out there. Stephanie Romanov comes into her silky own in this series, making Lilah Morgan all the more seductively evil because she is clear about the choices she has made; the satanic law firm of Wolfram and Hart are this show's most inspired creation. As the season moves to its close, Wesley (Alexis Denisof) has hard choices to make. The devastating climax is compulsive viewing, and this season also contains one of the most impressive single episodes of the entire show: in "Waiting in the Wings," writer, director and creator Joss Whedon comes up with a classic ghost story as Angel and his crew go to the ballet and find a performance that is literally timeless. --Roz Kaveney

Product Description

Even as Angel mourns the death of Buffy, Darla makes her way to L.A. with a mysterious new life growing within her. Now thrust into a role he never imagined, Angel needs the assistance of the Angel Investigations team more than ever. But while Cordelia, Gunn and Fred rally round the new dad, an ancient and deadly prophecy convinces Wesley to commit the ultimate betrayal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

237 of 239 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Angel - Vampire Dad/Hero/Super Detective, May 26, 2005

By	Lauren H. Lavine "Highlandlasse" (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The following paragraph is in my other reviews, but I believe it bears repeating. This six Disk DVD Set is extraordinary. The Picture and Sound quality are so very good that you feel as though you are watching it in a theater. The closed captioning and Audio come in other languages besides English. It's jam packed with all sorts of extra bonus specials. The Brilliant creator, Joss Whedon and other staff members are at their very best, just as they were with their work on Buffy (which is also a must own). I not only highly recommend this Season disk set, but the other four seasons as well. Quite a bit of quality work went into the making of all five seasons. They are a necessary buy for any Angel fan! It's completely impossible to be anything but extremely pleased with this purchase as well as the rest of the series. The writing, acting , directing, etc... are amazing per usual. This is without question once again feature film quality. The fact that all but the first season is filmed in Letter Box gives it that theater feel. In addition, the closed-captioning is less likely to interfere with the picture.
David Boreanaz (Angel) and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) are brilliant in their performances together as well as the obvious sexual tension between them. They play it to the hilt. I personally would have liked to see them get together, but Joss Whedon as always had other ideas. Yet, another character was added at the end of season two, Amy Acker (Fred). She was rescued by the crew from Pylea, Lorne's home demon dimension. She joins Angel investigations, starting out a little bit on the crazy side. She grows into a pivotal member of the group. Amy Acker is quite a versatile actor. I must give extra credit to the incomparable Julie Benz (Darla, Vampire Extraordinaire). She was introduced at the end of Season One, brought back by Wolfram and Hart as Human. She does an exceptional job in playing the wickedly pissed off pregnant vampire and then redeeming herself in Episode 9 "Lullaby", by taking her own life so that her son may live. I'm aware that quite a few fans didn't like her until Lullaby, but I always thought she was incredible and was very sorry to see her go as a on and off regular. However, not to worry fans she will reappear now and again. As in many cases in the Joss Whedon universe the dead end up working again and sometimes more. I not only highly recommend this Season disk set, but the other four seasons as well. Any true Angel fan must complete their set with this one. It's a keeper folks. Purchase this before it gets sold out and you miss your chance to continue your collection. ORDER IMMEDIATELY AND DON'T FORGET TO BUY SEASONS ONE, TWO, FOUR AND FIVE WHILE YOUR AT IT.

261 of 281 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best season yet of a remarkable show, October 30, 2003

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Warning: Lots of spoilers.

Season Three of Angel remains, in many ways, my favorite of the show's run. The shows are persistently good, but if I had to put my finger on a specific reason I like it so much, it is that the cast meshes together perfectly. By the end of the season, there would be major--at the time seemingly impossible to mend--rifts between some of the members of Angel Investigations, but the core group was the best to date. Angel, restored to the group as their spiritual if not technical leader, has recovered his sense of purpose. Cordy (whose presence is missed mightily in the Fifth Season--I hope she and Joss Whedon patch up their differences and work her back into the show where she belongs--Note: their differences, apart from the official rhetoric, apparently revolving around her leaving the show for a few episodes near the end of this season, and her delayed announcement of her real-life pregnancy in Season Four, causing significantly rewriting--my gut feeling is that she will be back after a period of "punishment") has completely accepted her role as the contact to the Powers That Be, and both works hard at becoming a more important member of the team and manages to work a compromise to deal with the extraordinary physical toll the visions are taking on her (by becoming part demon--a gigantic step that one could hardly imagine the Cordelia of the first three years of Buffy making). Wesley and Gunn are both taken by the new resident of Hotel Angel, Winifred aka Fred, the scientifically brilliant but psychologically traumatized young woman they had rescued from Pylea. And finally, Lorne, formerly known as The Host, moves in when his karaoke bar has to close. It is a great group, and the interaction between all of them is extraordinary. And the romance! Well, the potential of romance. Fred is initially smitten with Angel, her rescuer. Wes and Gunn gradually fall in love with Fred. And Cordy and Angel are both quite obviously growing closer and closer to one another.

Against this background of interpersonal relationships, Angel unexpectedly becomes a father. Darla, with whom he had had sex in Season Two in a futile attempt to lose his soul, returns to LA, in an exceedingly pregnant state, all the more remarkable for the fact that vampires cannot reproduce sexually (they reproduce through that biting thing). The result is a cute baby Angel dubs Connor, which is all well and good until he is kidnapped and taken to a demon dimension, where he grows up to be an uber angry, obnoxious kid bent solely on revenging himself on Angel, who he has been taught to hate by the man who kidnapped him. In the entirety of Buffy/Angel, the Connor story line might be the least popular in the history of the show. Still, it doesn't keep this from being a very good season indeed. Unlike most years of Buffy/Angel, Season Three is carried less by the season-long story arcs than by the individual episodes. There are some great shows, and many marvelous moments. The most harrowing might be the torturous decision that Wes has to make, and the enormous payment he has to pay for attempting to obey the dictates of conscience.

One of my favorite moments in the season occurs when the writers engage in one of the great in-jokes in TV history. On Season Six of Buffy, Buffy is so broke that she has to take a demeaning job slinging hamburgers and frying processed chicken product patties at a fast-food joint called Doublemeat Palace. It is probably the most biting joke at the expense of the fast-food industry in the history of TV (especially ironic given the fact that Sarah Michelle Gellar's career began as a very small child in a famous series of commercials for Burger King explicitly attacking MacDonald's). As a result of the Doublemeat Palace episodes, MacDonald's and other food outlets ceased advertising on Buffy. Meanwhile, on Angel, Wesley is researching a prophecy and is striving to solve the last piece of the puzzle. To do so, he needs to consult an idol in the shape of a statue, but when he goes to the coordinates, he sees not an imposing statue, but a personified plastic hamburger (think the Hamburgler from MacDonald's). The image of a dumb plastic hamburger person being a powerful and all knowing entity is funny enough on its own, but knowing about the conflict with the fast food industry on Angel's sister show gives the scene an entire different dimension.

The show ends on a spectacularly chaotic note. Angel, unlike Buffy, has tended to end each year with far more loose ends. Every season ends with as many questions raised as answered. Of no season closer is this truer than this year. The final episode sees Angel and Cordy, both obviously with strong feelings for one another, agreeing to meet on the beach near Malibu to "have a talk." (No mention is made about that nasty little curse afflicting Angel, which I found curious. No curse and Angel would have been back with Buffy.) But Cordy is unexpectedly called upon to become a Higher Being and ends the season by ascending into the Higher Realm, and Angel is bushwhacked by Connor and, in one of the most nightmarish moments in the show, encased in a metal cage and lowered to the bottom of the Pacific. The season started off with everyone feeling pretty good about things, but ends with Cordy no longer on Earth, Angel on the bottom of the ocean, and Wesley recovering from a near-deadly wound and utterly alienated from all his friends. And all of this sets up the utterly remarkable fourth season.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Angel hits its stride, October 18, 2003

By	R. Seehausen "aeroblaster2" (Cypress, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Many have called the third season of Angel a "supernatural soap opera". I won't deny it, this season contains many elements that could cause it to be described as such. But it's more than just that - Angel: Season 3 is a character-driven thriller of a story, intent on pulling viewers more directions than they can handle, all at once.

The season starts out normally enough; though he has taken some time off to mourn the death of his old lover, Angel returns in a state much better than expected; indeed, no worse for the wear after the news of Buffy's death.

Early in the season, the episodes remain mostly of the 'monster of the week' variety, alternating between humorous stories ("Carpe Noctem") and darker narratives ("Billy"). But the seasonal plot arc quickly kicks into overdrive when Darla arrives, pregnant with Angel's child and none to happy about it.

Throughout the season, romances are developed between the show's major players. At the forefront is Angel's seemingly unreciprocated feelings towards Cordelia, a development that drew as much distaste as it did intrigue among the viewer audience. The first episode where this really comes into play, and in my opinion one of the best of the season, is the excellent Whedon-penned "Waiting in the Wings". This episode also sees the climax of a love triangle between Wesley, Gunn, and Fred - the results of which are still sending ripples all the way into the early fifth season.

As the season passes the halfway mark and begins to draw near to its conclusion, things heat up, with fewer stand-alone stories and more storyline episodes. Things become so dynamic and tug the viewer so many different directions emotionally that you almost long to just have a break from all of the turmoil.

You don't get one. The season ends on one of the best cliffhangers ever seen on network television.

This is one of my favorite seasons of any television show, ever, for its intensity, character development, and well-executed plot. Make no mistake: this is one incredible buy for any Joss Whedon fan or anyone looking to get into his excellent shows.