If this list had existed last year, 30 Rock would not have made it. I was so unimpressed with the pilot and annoyed by the whole “30 Rock vs Studio 60” brouhaha of fall 2006, I gave up before it really even started. Such a foolish mistake. I didn’t retune-in until I caught the episode where Tracy had to appear on Conan in the midst of a hallucinogenic mental breakdown, and I haven’t stopped watching since.

Satirical looks at the entertainment industry have become such a common premise for television series in the past five years, it’s inevitable that most of them come off just as pretentious as their real-life counterparts that they’re trying to lampoon. 30 Rock has avoided this by never taking itself seriously and creating shows, films and plays in their own world that are unrivaled in their absurdity. The metaculture of 30 Rock is funnier than anything in our own world, and the glimpses of it are so brief, I’m left longing to live a world where I can buy tickets to “Mystic Pizza: the Musical” on Broadway, Netflix Who Dat Ninga? or watch the full video for “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” on MTV. It just doesn’t even seem fair. 30 Rock also bears a comforting resemblance to Mary Tyler Moore – a highly publicized fact that certainly can’t do them any harm.

Not only has 30 Rock proved itself to be the most consistently funny offering on NBC’s Thursday night, it’s also the only one to graciously forgo the sappy, group-huggy notes that most episodes of The Office and Scrubs end on. It may have just scraped in at number 10, but it walked all over a few longtime favorites to even get that far. Here’s one reason why: