The title is a little bit of a reach. Really, the network that brought us must-see TV is as weak as a kitten right now -- the CW now has more shows that I TiVo. But... the two shows on NBC that I watch might be my favorite drama and my favorite comedy on the air right now.

I have been meaning to address the second season of "Heroes" for a while now. I'm glad that I didn't. I probably would have jumped the gun on declaring the show's magic to have dissipated, but just as "Heroes" has always operated like "Lost" 2.0, they were able to get past their inevitable post-hype slack period much more rapidly. The first several episodes of the new season were troubled by a way-too-overt theme (family units) that was already one of the major ideas of the series without its having to be forced down our throats, and the many new characters introduced suffered from a not-as-fun-the-second-time effect. But a show that packs every episode with multiple unrelated storylines is always going to suffer slow starts at the beginning of seasons. The first three-quarters of the Hiro/Kensei, Sylar/Guatemalan twins, Mohinder/Parkman/Bob, and especially Claire/West (I hate that guy for stealing my name, by the way, and c'mon, a bowl haircut? It's 2007) storylines were all pretty predictable. But now that we're entering the fourth quarter, and that the show is finally bringing the heroes together into groups larger than three or four, momentum seems to have been restored. I still wish that they'd found a more original way to introduce the big mystery of the season; having Peter teleport to an empty New York was pretty freaking similar to the first season's Hiro teleporting to an exploded New York. Why can't evil ever target Chicago or Kansas City?

It snuck up on me, but I kept watching it, and then I watched the reruns all summer, and now I'm saving the new episodes to watch more than once -- "30 Rock" is a hysterical show. I personally have an odd relationship with it, but not a dynamic that's unfamiliar. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is my favorite show ever. I love that show. I have action figures. And yet I loathe the lead, Sarah Michelle Gellar. She's always bugged me, in everything else she's been in and from what I've heard about her real-life personality (she declined to sign an extension for an eighth season of "Buffy," in effect canceling the show, and jetted off for a vacation with Freddie Prinze, Jr. without telling any of the people she'd been working with for seven years that they were all out of a job). She bugs me. I don't particularly like Buffy the character, either; I just love everybody else on the show in general and Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head, and Joss Whedon's dialogue in particular.

So "30 Rock" is weirder still because while Tina Fey's onscreen persona really rubs me wrong (she's supposed to be a plain jane and yet she appears in cleavage-baring, fashionista outfits practically in every single episode) clearly I love her writing, because I find the rest of the cast and the plotting on the show to be wonderfully funny. Fey's skill as a comedy writer has been put to the test this season as NBC has foisted a steady stream of celebrity guest stars on her ensemble show, and unlike, say, "Arrested Development," "30 Rock" has only gotten funnier as people like Jerry Seinfeld, Vice President Gore, and David Schwimmer have wandered through. Tracy Morgan is a born sitcom actor, Alec Baldwin continues to kick ass and take names, and Fey has found a better balance for the supporting cast than in the first season, where she tended to overplay whomever was on a hot streak until they just weren't funny anymore (although I would have trouble cutting Jack McBrayer's lines too). I like this show a lot and I don't know why more of the cult that has formed around the American "Office" (which I admire very much, but just isn't for me) hasn't become accustomed to switching the set on a half-hour earlier.