Ballers: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Ballers: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 4, 2018

Does HBO know something we don’t? Both Ballers: The Complete First Season and Ballers: The Complete Second Season spread their ten episodes over two Blu-ray discs, while this third season has stuffed them onto one. (Even the disc menu's authoring is a bit odd, and some may think, as I did for a moment, that this single disc only contains the first five episodes, since that's all that initially show when you press the episode index.) While surprisingly there are no overt compression artifacts (other than some arguably shoddier than usual looking establishing shots, which I suspect may consist of upscaled stock footage), this smacks of a cost cutting move that may not augur that well for the series' future, even though the fourth season is already shooting. This single disc also contains no supplements (perhaps simply because there wasn't room for them), again unlike the first two Blu-ray releases, which at least offered minimal Inside the Episodes supplements. There's another reason that even some fans of this intermittently engaging series may feel that the show has done whatever the football equivalent of jumping the shark is, for this season seems to wander off field (so to speak) in a number of kind of odd directions that never really consistently reach the goal line (I'll stop now). Ballers has always tended to exist in the same sort of frat house ambience that also informed HBO's Entourage: The Complete Series, albeit in the world of jocks and sports agents, but there's a somewhat odd bifurcation this season that sees some elements played more toward the cartoonish side, while some arguably needless melodrama injects a supposedly deadly serious aspect at times.

For those wanting to catch up on the Ballers story so far, reviews of the show's two previous seasons can be accessed by clicking on the following links:

Ballers: The Complete First Season Blu- ray review

Ballers: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray review

A seemingly innocent (if still kind of smarmy) comment after a pick up basketball game starts to make Spencer Strasmore (Dwayne Johnson) to wonder whether he is (to speak euphemistically) “shooting blanks”. Why this would even matter is one of the odder things about this season, as a seemingly almost silly subplot gets worked into the series’ longer arching concerns with Spencer “aging out” of a professional sports career and into his agency standing. Even his agency standing seems to be in some doubt this season, as evidenced by his continually rocky relationship with Brett Anderson (Richard Schiff), Spencer’s boss and a guy who is written to be a kind of over the top quasi-villain, at least in terms of what Anderson wants for his agency versus what Spencer and Spencer’s main acolyte Joe Krutel (Rob Corddry) want.

That disconnect between Anderson, who is looking to get into the lucrative gambling trade in and around Las Vegas, and Spencer, who ends up in Vegas anyway to hustle a potential football franchise, ends up sending the series on just one of its many detours this season. Despite the blandishments of seeing Cheryl Ladd as the Mayor of Sin City and Christopher McDonald as the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, the whole Vegas angle serves to only point out that Ballers frequently wants to trade on a certain level of surface flash even as it pretends to delve into various characters' issues.

The series’ equally odd tendency to ping pong back and forth between comedic and dramatic aspects is in evidence once again this season, with little sidebars that are occasionally admittedly wryly humorous, if not outright hilarious, as in Reggie (London Brown) and Vernon (Donovan W. Carter) getting involved in a decidedly unusual “endorsement” deal (one revolving around a recently widely legalized controlled substance). But even here the show is just as likely to dart of on more melodramatic material, as in hints of unplanned pregnancies and Spencer’s ongoing financial issues, including a sizable loan that may be falling due soon.

The show continues to mine its supposed connection to the professional sports world with a number of passing cameos by real sports stars, but few if any of these really lend any authenticity to this enterprise, especially since they’re often so obviously shoe horned into the proceedings. Ballers continues in its tradition of offering all sorts of scenery, including exotic looking locations and even more exotic looking women, many of whom are typically sparsely clad, if that is they’re wearing any clothes at all. That element may be just another indication that Ballers isn’t shy about exploiting surefire techniques to at least pique viewers’ interests. Whether or not those viewers actually stay to watch past the “shiny” (and/or naked) objects may be increasingly questionable, however.

Ballers: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ballers: The Complete Third Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Despite having twice as many episodes placed on a single disc as the two previous seasons did, the only really noticeable deficit in the video presentation to my eyes was some of what I suspect is stock footage of various locales, typically used in fairly brief establishing shots. It's never looked great in any of the previous seasons when it's been utilized, but here a few passing brief shots look decidedly ragged when compared to the bulk of the season (see screenshot 19). That said, I was actually pleasantly surprised at the lack of other overt compression issues, with everything from some of the fine tweedy patterns on some of Spencer's suits, to other elements like the impressive hairstyles some characters sport offering really nice levels of fine detail. The palette is as bright and colorful as in previous seasons, and some of the location work, as in the Las Vegas segments, really pop quite vividly.

Ballers: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ballers: The Complete Third Season features an effective DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that supports regular use of source cues as well as quite a bit of ambient environmental effects that can be quite immersive at times, as in several crowded scenes in Las Vegas or even some of the practice material out on the field. There's even agreeable separation established in some of the office scenes, where background clatter fills the side and rear channels. Dialogue is always presented cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

Ballers: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This third season of Ballers does not include any supplemental material.

Ballers: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ballers has always struck me as one of those middling series that has elements that work along with some that don't, but which is buoyed by a generally fine assortment of performers in the ensemble. A lot of the positives continue in this third season, but for me personally this season offered an at least noticeable decline in quality, straining more for the comedy and relying too much on needless melodrama. The show's perhaps commendable emphasis on what it means to have real integrity is probably inarguably undercut by the show's emphasis on less "noble" elements like Vegas glitz and half naked females. If the fourth season of Ballers features zero Blu-ray discs, we'll know the end is nigh. Fans of the series will probably still want to check this out, and for them technical merits are surprisingly strong given the fact that HBO has limited this release to one disc.