Pound for pound, “30 Rock” is one of the funniest TV shows ever made, and that’s not hyperbole. If you’ve watched the show, you know for a fact that it’s packed so densely with jokes that you might find yourself constantly rewinding episodes because you were laughing so hard at something that you completely missed five subsequent sight gags and throwaway lines. The show was created by Tina Fey, who, at that point, was best known for writing and acting on “Saturday Night Live,” and ultimately, she and her co-showrunner Robert Carlock were encouraged to take her experience on “SNL” and turn it into the show that became “30 Rock.” So, just in case you haven’t watched it — or it’s been a while — what’s the general deal with “30 Rock?”

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Well, Fey stars as Liz Lemon, the head writer of a frankly terrible-looking sketch show called “The Girly Show,” or “TGS” for short — one of the very best things about “30 Rock” is that not only is the show-within-a-show not ever really important, but it’s clearly absolute crap — and most of the time, she’s flanked by Jack Donaghy, a hardline Republican CEO played by Alec Baldwin. (It’s reasonable to have very complicated feelings about this particular Baldwin, but you do have to hand it to him: his performance as Jack is genuinely incredible.) Alongside Tracy Morgan as the sketch show’s star Tracy Jordan, Jane Krakowski as Tracy’s gleefully narcissistic co-star Jenna Maroney, and Jack McBrayer as the possibly immortal page Kenneth Parcell, Fey shines in her first major television role — but with that said, not every single season of “30 Rock” is created equal.

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Again, this is one of the funniest TV comedies of all time, so the bar set by the best episodes of “30 Rock” is just extraordinarily high. With that in mind, let’s rank the show’s seven seasons from “worst” (which is relative) to best. A quick note: I’m not including the 2020 “reunion special” conducted over Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic, because ideally, we won’t have to think about that particular cultural trend again.

“If you want to see a great pilot, watch the first episode of ‘Cheers,'” Tina Fey recommends in her bestselling 2011 memoir “Bossypants.” “It’s charming, funny, and well constructed. If you want to see an awkward, sweaty pilot episode, watch ’30 Rock.’ I will not be joining you because I never want to watch that mess again.”

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Unfortunately, Fey is spot-on in this assessment. The first season of “30 Rock,” which kicked off in October of 2006 — and which was positioned as direct rival of Aaron Sorkin’s late-night centered drama “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” — is not great, largely because the show simply hadn’t found its footing just yet. Unfortunately, this is something that happens with some regularity in TV comedies; the first seasons of shows like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” are also regarded as much weaker than those that came afterwards. Basically, the issue with season 1 of “30 Rock” boils down to the fact that it’s not quite sure what to do with either Jack Donaghy or Tracy Jordan, which is unfortunate when you consider that those two turn out to be such phenomenal characters as soon as, well, season 2 of the series (and also, Jenna Maroney is way too “normal” at first, in that you could never imagine this version of Jenna announce that she has “mercury poisoning from obsessively taking [her] rectal temperature”). 

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Season 1 of “30 Rock” does introduce some defining supporting characters, like Liz’s wonderfully awful on-again, off-again boyfriend Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters), Jack’s terrifying mother Colleen Donaghy (a perfectly cast Elaine Stritch), and Devon Banks (Will Arnett), Jack’s professional nemesis — but it’s just not as good as what follows.

By the time “30 Rock” reached its seventh and final season in 2012, the show had completely gone off the rails, but I mean that in the best possible way. Specifically, I mean that, by this point in the narrative, the show had somewhat detached from reality by throwing in more and more jokes about Kenneth being immortal — and honestly just confirming that he’s some sort of magical being — and gotten progressively sillier, and in many ways, this is a good thing. Unfortunately, though, part of the reason that season 7 of “30 Rock” falls so low on this list is Hazel Wassername, an NBC page played by the brilliant Kristen Schaal who actually shows up in the previous season as an NBC page willing to give Kenneth a run for his money in sheer intensity. Hazel is, to be blunt, annoying. It’s not Schaal’s fault; the character is too weird (even for this show), and a lot of her bits just fall flat.

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Season 7 ends well — the one-two punch of “Hogcock!” and “Last Lunch” as the show’s final outing is great — and James Marsden, who’s also returning from season 6, is spectacular as Liz’s boyfriend-turned-husband Criss Chros, with whom she ends up adopting two children with uncanny similarities to her adult children Tracy and Jenna. Also, Catherine O’Hara plays Kenneth’s mother Pearline Parcell, joined by Bryan Cranston as Pearline’s often mentioned “friend” Ron — whom Kenneth hates — so that’s pretty great. Above all, though, season 7 is short at just 13 episodes, so aside from season 1, it’s one of the show’s “worst” simply because it’s so abbreviated.

Let me get this out of the way. Season 6 of “30 Rock” features the episode “Leap Day,” an installment directed by none other than Steve freakin’ Buscemi that may just be one of the best and strangest half hours in the history of NBC. (Don’t hit “play next” until this one ends properly and you see the fake holiday’s hero grow a set of nightmarish teeth and snarl at the screen!) When you think of the comedy’s penultimate season, “Leap Day” probably comes to mind pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the rest of season 6 doesn’t always reach the heights of that particular episode.

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A lot of season 6 focuses on Jack’s quest to rescue his wife Avery Jessup (Elizabeth Banks) from North Korea, where she’s been stranded as a political prisoner — and unwilling bride of dictator Kim Jong-un, played by Margaret Cho — since the end of the show’s 5th season. I’m going to be honest: “30 Rock” could have just written Avery out even though she’s the mother of Jack’s child; it’s not the kind of show where the audience would be distracted by such a thing, and it’s painfully obvious that Banks had to go work on other projects and couldn’t commit to NBC. Spending an inordinate amount of time on “rescuing” Avery, including a subplot where Jack catches feelings for Avery’s steely mother Diana (Mary Steenburgen), actually just feels tedious … and “30 Rock” should never feel tedious. 

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As I said, both Hazel and Criss join the series in season 6, which is a mixed blessing, because Hazel is grating and Criss is a perfect love interest for Liz. Despite excellent episodes like “St. Patrick’s Day” (which features a phenomenal turn from Dean Winters’ Dennis Duffy) and “Alexis Goodlooking and the Case of the Missing Whisky,” season 6 of “30 Rock” just isn’t as good as it could be.

The second season of “30 Rock” was cut short due to the writer’s strike that took place between 2007 and 2008, but across just 15 short episode, the show gets a running start after its rough first season. Sure, it starts strong with “SeinfeldVision,” where Jack tries to figure out how to digitally insert Jerry Seinfeld into every NBC show in the hopes that they’ll all be as successful as “Seinfeld,” but things really get into high gear with the season’s fourth episode “Rosemary’s Baby,” one of the show’s all-time best half-hours that happens to star the late, great Carrie Fisher as the genuinely insane comedy writer Rosemary Howard. Beyond that, we start really getting into the weirdness of “30 Rock” with episodes like “MILF Island” — which presents a “fictional” reality show hosted by Rob Huebel that sort of became a real thing in 2023 with “MILF Manor” — and “Ludachristmas,” a holiday staple that pits Elaine Stritch’s Colleen Donaghy against the cheerful, hapless Lemon family. 

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Despite its abbreviated run, the final stretch of season 2 of “30 Rock” is nothing short of extraordinary. After “Subway Hero,” where Dennis Duffy briefly becomes a folk hero for saving someone from an oncoming train and ends up trying to shove Liz in front of another train to “save” her too, we get “Succession,” where Tracy decides that his legacy for his family should be a pornographic video game. (This episode, as a result, features the best-ever homage to Miloš Forman’s 1984 film “Amadeus” ever committed to film.) The season’s penultimate episode, “Sandwich Day,” explores whether or not Liz Lemon can “have it all” with truly jarring results, and in the season 2 finale “Cooter,” Jack is forced into a job in Washington D.C., where he’s paired up with the witless titular Cooter, a George W. Bush staffer played by a wide-eyed and earnest Matthew Broderick. There are a few better seasons of “30 Rock,” but this one is really good.

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In the season 3 premiere of “30 Rock,” titled “Do-Over,” Liz invites an adoption agency evaluator named Bev (Megan Mullally) to her workplace to prove that she can balance motherhood and her professional life; after Bev gives Liz a failing grade and subsequently sustains a serious head injury, Liz takes the opportunity to stage a second attempt and gets an addled Bev to give her a passing grade. This should give you a sense of what to expect from the rest of season 3. The season’s third episode, “The One with the Cast of Night Court,” features Jennifer Aniston in a guest role as Claire, Liz and Jenna’s wild friend who seduces Jack and promptly makes his life a living hell; in the fifth episode “Reunion,” we get an absolutely perfect twist when Liz and Jack go to her high school reunion and Liz realizes that she was the bully, not the bullied. 

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Salma Hayek joins in a recurring role as Elisa Pedreira, a nurse from Puerto Rico with whom Jack becomes immediately smitten — despite the fact that she killed her first husband in a fit of jealousy — and we start getting more appearances from Chris Parnell’s wonderful and wholly inept Dr. Leo Spaceman (pronounced “spah-cheh-man”). Jon Hamm even shows up as Dr. Drew Baird, a doctor who dates Liz and whose ridiculous handsomeness gives us the pitch-perfect episode “The Bubble,” where Liz realizes Drew gets special treatment everywhere because he’s so hot. Season 3 of “30 Rock” also introduces one of the series’ all-time best gags, which is Jenna’s doomed Janis Joplin biopic; because they can’t get Joplin’s life rights, the character ends up bearing the name “Jackie Jormp-Jomp.”

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I could literally just list episode names here that would properly explain why season 3 of “30 Rock” is so good, including “The Funcooker,” “Apollo, Apollo,” and “Kidney Now!” Suffice to say, this season is phenomenal, and it more than earns its third place spot.

I’m going to be honest: seasons 4 and 5 of “30 Rock” are basically tied for the top spot, but I had to knock it down one spot for one specific reason: did Julianne Moore have to be saddled with that absolutely ludicrous Boston accent? Anyway, Moore shows up as Jack’s childhood love Nancy Donovan, which means he can’t decide whether he wants to be with her or his younger flame Avery Jessup; in the season 4 finale “I Do Do,” it’s revealed that Avery is pregnant, writing Moore out of the show for good. (With all due respect to Moore, I was personally not sad to see Nancy go.) Elsewhere in season 4, though, you’ve got some all-timer episodes, like “Dealbreakers Talk Show #0001,” an episode that somehow manages to introduce Tracy’s EGOT subplot and feature a scene where Liz cries out of her mouth after botched eye surgery at the same time. (The pre-mouth crying bit where Liz has a Gollum and Smeagol-esque argument with herself in her dressing room mirror is also an instant classic.) Jason Sudeikis returns as Liz’s ex-boyfriend Floyd, but she destroys his hard-earned sobriety by getting him “drunk on salmon,” and the series brings on Cheyenne Jackson as new TGS cast member Danny Baker, who has such a beautiful singing voice that it gives Jenna a nosebleed (which, as she tells him, isn’t a symptom of a “rage stroke”).

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Season 4 of “30 Rock” is basically perfect. It’s not the best season of “30 Rock,” though, because the following season has so many great episodes that it just wins out by default. Still, season 4 is really, really good … and if I’m being honest, “Dealbreakers Talk Show #0001” is my favorite episode of the entire series.

If the pilot of “30 Rock” is, as Tina Fey put it, “sweaty,” season 5 of “30 Rock” is the show at its most confident and self-assured. After meeting a pilot named Carol — played by Matt Damon, for some reason — Liz is dating him instead of the dour Wesley Snipes (a permanently aggrieved Michael Sheen, who insists it’s weirder that the other guy is named Wesley Snipes), and Tracy races to join his wife Angie (Sherri Shepherd) while she’s in labor despite the fact that he has to win a game of “Cash Cab” to get there in the first place. (God, remember that show?!) Season 4 also features “30 Rock’s” first-ever live show, which feels like a natural progression when you think about the series’ roots for even one second, and episodes like “Brooklyn Without Limits” (where John Slattery plays a deranged political candidate), “Mrs. Donaghy” (where Liz takes advantage of accidentally marrying Jack during a French ceremony), and “It’s Never Too Late For Now” (where the TGS team decides to give Liz a wild, albeit staged, night out).

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This season is also home to two of the show’s all-time best episodes. In “TGS Hates Women,” Liz hires a popular comedian named Abby Flynn (Cristin Milioti early in her career) to prove that her show doesn’t hate women and ends up ruining the woman’s life; in the reality show spoof “The Queen of Jordan,” Angie takes center stage as her in-universe reality show launches. Season 5 of “30 Rock” is the series at its best, but really, you should just watch the entire show from start to finish, because it’s just that good.

“30 Rock” is available to stream on both Hulu and Peacock.