Don't binge it. You can't binge 13 days and 7 hours of content (the total runtime) without going mad.

If you buy the digital complete series on iTunes or Vudu, you get convenience but lose the commentary tracks. And Simpsons commentaries are a secret college course in comedy. Hearing Conan O’Brien talk about writing the "Monorail" episode, or Matt Groening admitting he doesn’t know how nuclear power works, is worth the price of admission.

These seasons are arguably the funniest, sharpest, most subversive television ever produced. From Last Exit to Springfield (S4) to You Only Move Twice (S8), the writing was a perfect storm of Harvard Lampoon wit and blue-collar cynicism.

In the history of home entertainment, few box sets have ever carried the weight of a The Simpsons complete series collection. Whether you own the 2014 "Every Episode. Every Season." brick (weighing nearly 13 pounds) or the digital library on a hard drive, owning the complete run of The Simpsons is less about collecting DVDs and more about owning a piece of modern mythology.

But here is the fascinating twist: The complete series forces you to confront the "Zombie Era" (Seasons 11–20). While critics panned these years for their celebrity stunt-casting and "Jerky Homer" personality, watching them back-to-back reveals a strange comfort. The show stopped being a satirical dagger and became a warm, predictable blanket. Is that a failure? Or is it evolution? The most astonishing thing about looking at the complete series as a whole is not the jokes—it’s the prophecy.

It is, quite simply, the longest-running scripted primetime series in history. To put together a "complete series" is to hold a mirror to 36 years of human civilization. Let’s address the elephant in the room—or rather, the elephant with four fingers and a donut. When fans talk about buying the complete series, they are usually chasing the dragon of Seasons 3 through 8 (often called the "Golden Age").

D’oh!

To own the complete series is to own the longest-running joke in television history. And the punchline? It’s still airing. As soon as you buy the "Complete" set, it’s already incomplete.

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie have been 34, 34, 10, 8, and 1 for 36 years. They have outlasted presidents, wars, and the collapse of the media that birthed them.

Featuring the voice of Michael Jackson (credited as "John Jay Smith"), this episode is a masterpiece of empathy, featuring a man in a mental institution who thinks he is the King of Pop. Following the Leaving Neverland documentary, the producers yanked the episode from circulation.