DVD Dilemma

I have a passion for entertainment, everything entertainment, television, movies, music and especially video games. Along with this passion for entertainment, I also have an illness; I am compelled to complete sets. I mean sets of anything and everything, if it comes in a series than I have to collect the entire series. The solution is for me not to buy or receive anything that comes in a series or set, hardly a realistic solution.

Naturally, DVD's are one of the biggest culprits that I suffer with on a daily basis; and it is daily, most notably television series that are released to DVD. As it stands I am currently collecting 41 television series on DVD. While many of them are completed because they where either canceled or ended their run, there still are several that are still going strong. Below is a list of all the television series I am collecting. The series in bold are completed, the italicized series are up-to-date with the current season purchased and the series in regular text means I am missing one or more seasons from the series.

01. 3rd Rock from the Sun
02. The 4400
03. Airline
04. Alias
05. The Amazing Race
06. Angel
07. Arrested Development
08. Battlestar Galactica
09. Bones
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
11. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
12. Curb Your Enthusiasm
13. Dead Like Me
14. Ellen
15. ER
16. Firefly
17. How I Met Your Mother
18. Keen Eddie
19. Lost
20. Millennium
21. The Muppet Show
22. The Office
23. Once and Again
24. Oz
25. Prison Break
26. Robot Chicken
27. Seinfeld
28. Sex and the City
29. The Simple Life
30. The Simpsons
31. Six Feet Under
32. The Sopranos
33. South Park
34. Spider-Man: The '67 Collection
35. SpongeBob SquarePants
36. Supernatural
37. The West Wing
38. Will & Grace
39. Wonder Woman
40. Wonderfalls
41. The X-Files

If you are not aware, maintaining 41 television series is no easy task especially when you have The Simpsons in your collection and you don't see an end in sight. I'm not the only one in my family who also suffers from the need to complete sets, my Mom also suffers from it but probably not as extreme as I. What's frustrating is that some of these I don't even want anymore like SpongeBob SquarePants. WHAT WAS I THINKING!!! Looking at the list again, SpongeBob is probably my biggest regret, I watched it and it wasn't that funny. Possibly because I'm not five years old even though I may act like it on occasion.

I think the hardest thing I'm struggling with is the cost of some of these seasons. Take The Sopranos with Part 1 of the 6th season costing $80! I don't get the full season for $80?! What a rip off! This is par for the course when it comes to series from HBO and Showtime.

Another hard thing to deal with is that some of these production companies are not releasing the entire series on DVD. Take for instance, The Amazing Race, which currently has only two of its ten or so seasons out. This is also the case for Once and Again which currently has only two of its three seasons released. For someone who needs complete series or sets, this kind of behavior drives me insane. I hope that in the future, these companies realize that people like me need the sense of closure that completed series give us.