30 Rock

Created by Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey, 30 Rock is primetime's most playfully strange half-hour comedy. Set behind the scenes at a fictional Manhattan-based SNL-like show, the series thankfully involves very little sketch comedy, instead mixing awkward humor (think The Office) with gleeful absurdity (à la The Simpsons), both channeled through Fey's smart, unabashedly nerdy, and sometimes-bespectacled vision. While the show struggled to survive its first season, it eventually gained a legion of diehard supporters as the characters found their voices, particularly Fey's oft-beleaguered food-adoring alter ego, Liz Lemon, and her zinger-flinging control-freak boss, Jack Donaghy, portrayed with hypnotic verve by Alec Baldwin—not to mention Tracy Morgan's not-at-all-veiled Tracy Jordan and Jack McBrayer's bafflingly chipper Kenneth the Page. Boosted indirectly by Fey's hit 2008 SNL send-up of look-alike right-winger Sarah Palin, 30 Rock became reinvigorated when many shows typically start to slide, allowing for more amusing guest appearances (Will Arnett and Jon Hamm, among others) and additional seasons of wildly creative ridiculousness.