“We need to break a habit, people,” he writes. “Our favorite TV show is being released on DVD in complete seasons and we, like jerks, go out and buy Season One and then later on, we buy Season Two and Season Three and so on. We have to stop doing this.”

Evanier argues that what we should do is wait until the (relatively) cheaper complete boxed sets are released. These mammoth, complete-series mega-collections often feature new or never-before-seen bonus materials. Boxed sets like this have already been announced for shows like M*A*S*H, The West Wing, and Friends. Rather than buy season to season and get only a few of bonus features, a little at a time, we should save our money and buy the entire package — every episode, every bonus feature — when it’s released as a single unit. The alternative is to go without these extra bonus materials, or to fall for clever marketing tricks and pony up for the damn things all over again.

Evanier does have a point. If you’re a television series completist, you probably are better off waiting for the full-series boxed set. Deluxe edition releases and re-releases usually don’t include enough new material to make up for buying all the old stuff twice. But that doesn’t mean the die-hard fans don’t want that new material. The bigger boxed sets are also usually cheaper, when everything is added up. Deluxe, full-series boxed sets do sound like the better deal, all around.

Trouble is, those boxed set may take years to arrive on the market, or they may never arrive at all. Sales of the earlier, single-season DVDs are going to be a factor whenever a studio considers future releases, so it’s altogether possible that, by not buying now, you jinx your chances of ever even seeing a complete-series boxed set on the market. It’s a calculated risk, but I think you can safely bet that there are some shows — including some of the ones that Evanier mentions by name — that will only see full-series boxed sets if the packages of individual seasons sell enough copies.

Evanier follows up on his original post with a message from Earl Kress, a friend of his, who points out this very problem: if seasons one and two fail to sell, the studio is not going to release a full-series boxed set. “[C]ompanies are now starting to reassess midway through and cancel series,” Kress writes. They’ll decide that there isn’t enough of a market, like they’ve already done with a few shows, and they’ll scrap the whole thing. I think Evanier’s hope that holding out for mega-sets “will lead to companies releasing these things as complete sets at the outset” is unrealistic. It’s a hope I wish I could share, but I just don’t think that’s how the companies releasing these DVDs think. If something sells, they put out more — and, with the mega-sets, they try to sell it to you all over again with an added bell or whistle. But if something doesn’t sell, then they usually just stop trying to sell it.

I wish Evanier’s plan could work. I wish that there was a way of getting the extra bonus materials without shelling out for the same episodes twice or more. Farscape, for instance, is being re-released in “Starburst Edition” sets…and like a slavering fanboy I’ve actually been buying a lot of them. All I really want are the bonuses — especially the commentary tracks — and so every time I buy one of the things I end up thinking, “Well, gee, that was nice. But did I really need all these other discs again?”

But, of course, this raises for me another potential problem with Evanier’s plan. I discovered Farscape on DVD, while it was still on the air. I couldn’t have done that if Henson, or the Sci-Fi Channel, or ADV Films were waiting to release a full-series boxed set. (Keep in mind, this was before the show was cancelled and its fourth season unexpectedly became its last.) They’d only just be releasing that mega-set now. I liked watching Farscape in blocks, and I liked discovering it while it was still happening, before it was something that had happened. I’ve discovered other shows that way — Gilmore Girls, Dead Like Me, Arrested Development — and I’ve bought the season DVD sets in order to get as caught up as possible. Because renting the episodes — slow and not always possible — and then waiting years to buy them just didn’t seem like a fun idea.

I probably won’t buy the upcoming new release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Word is, the only thing new is a short featurette on Spamalot, which I don’t think justifies the price tag or having an extra DVD case on the shelf. My obssession and completist streak runs only so far.