The third season of the hit AMC original series The Walking Dead, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, begins strongly with nearly a year having past and Rick and his survivors now operating with stealth like a professional special ops group while moving from place to place until they come upon a prison and decide to take it in the hope of creating a safe and self sufficient haven for themselves. Not too far away exists a fortified town where the survivors under the guidance of The Governor (David Morrissey) seem to have created an idealized mini "Our Town." Andrea and her savior from the second season finale Michonne (Danai Guira) end up there after being discovered by none other than Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker), who was last seen trapped on a department store roof in an overrun Atlanta. We know he escaped because when the survivors returned for him in the first season they discovered that he sawed off his own hand to escape the roof.
It is not long before we discover that Woodbury is not the perfect friendly society that it appears to be on the outside and Rick, who has been hardened since the events of the second season, and his group discover that they are not alone in the prison. The whole season basically slowly heads toward what is set up as an inevitable confrontation between Rick Grimes and his group and The Governor and his mercenaries over power and survival.
The acting is top notch and besides introducing Michonne to the TV series, the fan favorite character Tyrese (Chad Coleman) from the graphic novel is introduced as well. The third season has more action than the second season, but the character development is lacking. Characters that were important in the graphic novel appear and are killed off so fast that there is no time to have any emotional investment in them. The other big problem with the third season is that it reduces the zombie threat to a point where we have barely armed characters traveling for miles in the woods and picking off the walkers like they were a joke.
Kirkman has stated that the zombie threat would be intensified for the fourth season and a return to character development would be strictly adhered too. From the online trailers it seems as though the zombies will indeed become far more dangerous than before, but as for everything else, we'll have to wait and see.
Anchor Bay Entertainment presents the complete third season of The Walking Dead across five discs in their broadcast high definition AVC encoded widescreen aspect ratio of (1.78:1) with an enveloping English Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Surround Soundtrack. A French Language Dolby Surround 2.0 Soundtrack and English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired as well as Spanish Language Subtitles are encoded across all five discs for all of the episodes.
Extra value features include episode length audio commentaries featuring Iron E. Singleton, Guy Ferland, Gregory Nicotero, Danai Guira, Robert Kirkman, Dave Alpert, Gale Anne Hurd, Michael Rooker and Chad Coleman respectively for episodes that include "Killer Within", "Say The Word", "Made To Suffer", the mid season premiere and "This Sorrowful Life." The commentaries are both retrospective and scene specific.
The majority of the featurettes are on the final disc and they include a reel of deleted scenes (13:20), and behind the scenes shorts detailed as Rising Son (6:46), Guts & Glory (7:31), Moving The Dead (8:04), Safety Behind Bars (9:42), Michonne Vs. The Governor (5:10), Heart of a Warrior (8:24), Gone But Not Forgotten (8:13) and Evil Eye (7:50).
An advertisement for "Before The Farm: The Walking Dead Video Game" (1:08) and a TV spot for Breaking Bad (:33) wrap up the bonus content within this Blu-ray Disc set.
The Walking Dead: The Complete Third Season is available on Blu-ray Disc now at retailers on and offline courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment. The fourth season premiere of The Walking Dead will air on Sunday October 18, 2013. For more information visit AMCTV.com.
(C) Copyright 2013 By Mark Rivera
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