We were fans of "Angel" when it was on the air, and it is great to be able to re-watch it now. I had purchased Seasons One and Two years ago in a special deal, but before now, I had been unable to acquire any more seasons. Then, lo and behold, Amazon was selling the Slim Set for Season Three at a fantastic price.

Season Three is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride for Angel and his friends -- Cordelia, the Seer; Gunn, the fearless fighter and best friend to "Fred" (Winifred), librarian-mathematician turned mystical-puzzle-solver; and Wesley, rogue demon-hunter no longer. Throw into the mix the evil machinations of Wolfram and Hart and Darla and voila! an intense season awaits you.

Season Three of Angel is not only the single best season of the show, it is arguably the best single season of any show in our beloved Whedonverse (well, Angel turning evil in Season Two of Buffy will always be the most important thing to ever happen in this universe and to these characters whom we have come to love, but Season Three of Angel is definitely a contender for runner-up). Buffy was always the more simple and straight-forward centerpiece of the Whedonverse. Metaphors have always been plainer and characters less complex. Buffy is a weekly motion picture. Angel, on the other hand, is a novel being translated to the screen. The first two seasons of Angel were the prologue. Season Three is the testament, the required reference material needed to pass the class. Watching this DVD boxed set of 22 episodes, I remembered just how absolutely gripping it was to watch them on the original air dates. There was something about how the writers structured the plots this season that seem to stretch the alloted 43 minutes much longer. Conventional "we killed the bad guy" climaxes often happened earlier, leaving room for big emotional payoffs and character-related events. In effect, each episode had multiple climaxes. This is the strongest DVD release in the Buffy/Angel series so far, with picture quality that is richer and less grainy than any of the other releases, previously unavaible but much wanted goodies like screentests and, finally, a Darla featurette (which is less informative than it is commemerative). The menus look great as well.

Well here it finally is (Drum Roll Please) the Complete Third Season of Angel. This was Angel and it's Peak, and can almost rival that of the second and third seasons of Buffy. Much has changed between the two seasons... Fred (the science nerd that Angel and Co. rescuited from Phlyea) is now a member of the gang, Lorne has recieved his badge of membership in the LA Branch of the Scooby Gang, and Cordelia has found her ture meaning in life.
SPOLERS AHEAD!!!!The Seasons starts off with Angel trying to get over the death of his beloved Buffy, but the pitty party is halted when Darla Returns with big new... She's got a Bun in the Oven. When she returns to Angel, the gang doesn't know what to do, and before they knowit Darla is dead and Connor is born. But before anyone can get attached he is stolen and sent to a demon deminsion, only to return two weeks later as a teenager.
The Season episodes are...Heartthrob", "That Vision Thing", "That Old Gang Of Mine", "Carpe Noctem", "Fredless", "Billy", "Offspring", "Quickening", "Lullaby", "Dad", "Birthday", "Provider", "Waiting In The Wings", "Couplet", "Loyalty", "Sleep Tight", "Forgiving", "Double Or Nothing", "The Price", "A New World", "Benediction", and "Tomorrow".
The Special Features are:Disc 1
None
Disc 2
Commentary by Tim Minear and Jeffrey Bell ("Billy")
Disc 3
Commentary by Tim Minear and Mere Smith ("Lullaby")
Deleted scenes with commentary by Tim Minear and Mere Smith (Cordy Show "Birthday") (Run Time 4:09)
Featurette: "Darla: Deliver Us From Evil" (Run Time 12:11)
Angel Series Outtakes (Run Time 4:30)
Disc 4
Commentary by Joss Whedon ("Waiting in the Wings")
Deleted scenes with commentary by Joss Whedon ("Waiting in the Wings") (Run Time 5:00)
Disc 5
None
Disc 6
Featurette: "Season 3 Overview" (Run Time 32:54)
Featurette: "Page to Screen" (Run Time 13:56)
Screen tests: Amy Acker (2:36) and Vincent Kartheiser (1:48) (Run Time 4:24)
Still Gallery (approx. 50 images)
So sit back and enjoy the best of what the buffyverse has to offer...

Season Three of ANGEL ran contemporaneously with Season Six of its then-estranged sister show, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (network politics and Hollywood egos had resulted in a channel shift for the latter, and a "ban" on the cross-over episodes that had fueled both shows' previous two seasons). A quick glance at the tone of both shows suggests it must have been a bummer of a year at their parent company, Mutant Enemy: both are extraordinarily bleak, plunging their characters into dark places and difficult emotional situations that reshape nearly everything viewers had come to expect from each program. I should quickly add that both shows are also superb-- BUFFY, in particular, is so powerful, and closes its sixth season with such emotional and thematic finality, that it's hard to view its seventh and final year as anything but a pandering anti-climax (but that's a review for a different time). ANGEL, on the other hand, was just warming up.
Season Three is a crucial one for ANGEL, acting as a bridge between the low-key, stand-alone episodes of Seasons One and Two and the intense darkness (and epic narrative) of Season Four. Season Two laid the groundwork for such a shift, by bringing back Angel's old paramour Darla and moving evil law firm Wolfram & Hart to center stage (they'd played a peripheral role in Seaon One), and, especially in its second half, the second season flirts with brilliance. But it is in Season Three when this new narrative style takes full effect, resulting in what is arguably ANGEL's best year. Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt, ANGEL's co-creators, executive producers and chief creative figures, keep a perfect balance between the intimately personal and the excessively epic, reconfiguring several character relationships, introducing crucial new heroes and villains, and throwing the reader into a storyline of love, family, violence and betrayal worthy of Tony Soprano.
Of course, Tony Soprano never had to encounter a giant demon named Skip; a ballerina under the spell of an eternal dance (in musical geek whedon's tribute to THE RED SHOES, "Waiting in the Wings"); a vampire hunter named holtz; sex-crazed, karaoke-blessing sirens; or a talking plastic hamburger that holds the secrets of a crucial prophecy. All of these elements remind the viewer that they are in the WhedonVerse, where the sublime and the ridiculous mingle promiscuously, and to great effect. If it's hard for you to reconcile that such fantastic elements can co-exist alongside some of the funniest comedy (the laugh-out-loud sitcom parody at the center of "birthday") and the most moving drama (really the whole year, but especially "forgiving"), well then, perhaps you shouldn't be watching a show about a vampire with a soul (if reductive histrionics and easy answers are what you're after, there's always SIX FEET UNDER).
For everyone else, sit back and enjoy some of the best recent television on DVD. All of the writers and directors are at the top of their games here (special mention should also be made of composer Robert Kral's mournful scores, and the superb camerawork), and so is the cast. In a year when all of the leads are having fun adding new shades to their characters.......If you want great action, well-rounded characters, and one of the more striking season-ending cliffhangers on TV, you really can't go wrong with this purchase.

For me Season Three of Angel is The Best Season of Angel. I really love the character of Amy Acker and feel the cast really gelled in season three. I thought Wesley gave a strong performance. Gunner was very underrated on the show as he was a great character that I liked. All these characters were so different and there were brilliant storyline's written for them. I thought the Gunner, Wesley and Fred love triangle was great. I liked Cordy and Angel's relationship. A lot happens in Season Three. It's exciting and a thrill ride from start to finish. But I think having Winnifred in there for a first full season with the rest of the cast and the addition of great supporting characters and great stories this was the best season. A lot of great episodes. Cheers and enjoy!

At the end of the second season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," when Buffy skilled Angel, the series reached its operatic height. The climax was the culmination of everything that had been set up and provided a level of pathos rarely seen in network television. During the third season of "Angel," the counterpart to "BtVS" reached its height in a moment that was stunningly surprising. But then the story arcs that dominated this third season were totally surprising.
Season two of "Angel" had ended with the gang returning from Pylea only to learn from Willow that Buffy is dead (How good is Alyson Hannigan? She just looks at Angel, never says a word, and it is clear what has happened). Season three starts with Angel still in a bad mood after a long summer of mourning Buffy, but then three significant threads are revealed. The first is a prophecy in the Nyazian scrolls, that predicts a being or an event that will bring about the end of time. The second is the arrival of an immensely pregnant Darla (Julie Benz), who informs Angel that he is the father. The third is the arrival of Holtz, a mortal enemy of Angelus and Darla, who has been brought from the past by the demon Sahjhan to kill them both.
Of course, these threads all collide, and this is only the story arc that dominates the first third of the season. Darla's pregnancy derails any romantic entanglement between Angel and Cordelia, the evidence of the one night stand with Darla adding insult to the injury of the gypsy's curse. Then there are the complications of the pregnancy, which should have been impossible given mommy and daddy are dead vampires, because it turns out the baby has a soul and that Darla cannot deliver naturally (as if that has meaning at this point).
This sets up the aforementioned great moment in "Lullaby" when Darla gives birth in the rain in the alley behind Caritas. How great was this moment? I basically told everybody I knew about what happened--we are talking people who never watched the show and had no interest in ever watching it--and they were all impressed by the power of the moment. What impressed me the most was the performance during this season by Julie Benz. When you consider how little there was to Darla during the first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the change in the character is impressive, but then on "Angel" that is par for the course: witness the transformations of Coredlia Chase and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. But I still think there was something special about the totally captivating performance by Benz.
The Darla plot thread is replaced in the rest of the season by the Connor plot thread, as Angel has to learn how to be a single parent to a baby boy. Holtz is still in pursuit, gathering his own collection of warriors to go up against Angel and his gang, and getting ever closer. But the key development turns out to be the prophecy in the Nyazian scrolls, which is finally translated by Wesley. The former Watcher discovers that the prophecy says that Angel is going to kill his own son, and with Wolfram & Hart spiking Angel's blood supply with blood from Connor so that the baby starts smelling like food to him, Wesley has to take things into his own hands and in "Sleep Tight" we have what you would have thought was a great season finale, but there are still six episodes to go.
The final story arc has Angel dealing with the loss of Connor and then the surprise when his son returns, but not as a teenage demon fighter. However, having spent years in a demon dimension being taught to hate Angelus by Holtz, this is not a happy reunion and it is payback time in "Tomorrow." You look back at this third season and it is pretty impressive how much happened in these twenty-two episodes. One of the reasons this season was so strong was that there was so much going on in terms of the show's subplots. Having brought Fred back from Pylea, she develops an early crush on Angel only to become involved in a love triangle with Wesley and Gunn. Then there is Lilah Morgan (Stephanie Romanov), who comes into her own at Wolfram & Hart now that she is no longer in Lindsey McDonald's shadow (e.g., "Billy").
The make it or break it part of this season is the return of Connor all grown up. I have to admit that I understand the grain of salt with which it needs to be taken with regards to how long can Angel take care of a baby? Rachel has a baby on "Friends" and you can see how often anybody even remembers to talk about Emma. So from a writing standpoint I think this a good move, as understandable as when Pam woke up and found Bobby alive in the shower on "Dallas" (it was the easiest way of getting things back the way they were). Besides, Josh Whedon, Tim Minear and the rest of the writing staff were just pouring things on fast and furious by that point. The only part that I had trouble with was Cordelia's ascension as a higher being.
The extras are getting better on these DVD sets. There is the expected commentary on "Lullaby," as well as on "Billy" and "Waiting in the Wings." There are a few deleted scenes, outtakes, and screen tests for the new kids on the block, Amy Acker and Vincent Kartheiser. But the chief extra features are the featurettes, which include a "Season 3 Overview," a piece on "Page to Screen," and, my obvious favorite, a celebration of Julie Benz's performance in "Darla: Deliver Us from Evil."

This is the best season for the Angel series. It's very interesting and well-written. There's lots of suspense and it's ending cliffhanger is a classic in TV-land. (Think Cary Grant and Debra Kerr trying to get to the top of the Empire State Building to tell each other how much they love each other in "An Affair to Remember; unfortunately, there's that darned taxicab...)

Up to this point, all of the main characters have been introduced with the exception of Angel's son. How Angel gets a son, what Angel has to do to protect him, and where Angel, his son and Corelia end up are all part of this marvelous season's questions and sometimes answers. You have to watch all of Seasons 1 & 2 though to understand this season so don't skip to this one before watching them.

One other note: Lilah from Wolfram & Hart (the ever-evil lawfirm) starts showing up more and more. The actress is great in this role and adds just the right touch of callousness and sensuousness. I love to watch her in the part - she's excellent!

Why was this show canceled after 5 seasons? David Boreanaz and charisma carpenter are great. Joss Whedon always does very original and engrossing, but critically underrated, shows such as Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse. Each season of Angel is better written than the last. Kudos to Whedon.