Community is our selection as the second best show on television. This is the debut appearance of the NBC sitcom most analysts have been comparing to 30 Rock. Several members of BOP’s staff are of the opinion that the better analog is Newsradio, another NBC Thursday night program that featured multiple professional comedians working in tight quarters who developed a dysfunctional family unit together. Those of you who are long time readers of the site recognize how lavish we are with our praise toward Newsradio, so any show that pleasantly reminds us of it walks on hallowed ground. Why do we hold Community in such esteem?

Describing the show probably lessens its impact. On the surface level, this is a sitcom with the premise that several older people have been forced by various extenuating circumstances to return to school at a local community college. There is a mother going through a divorce, an attorney who has lost his license to practice, an attractive 30-year-old crusader fresh out of crusades and an older jerk (played without any need for acting by Chevy Chase) killing the free time he has in his retirement. They are joined by a trio of age appropriate college students in a makeshift study circle that evolves into more. Again, I realize this sounds a bit generic on paper. If you read the descriptions and ignored the show based on them, here is what I would ask of you. Watch these four episodes: Modern Warfare, Epidemiology, Cooperative Calligraphy and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. By the end of the fourth one, you’ll probably be just as hooked as our staff is.

Last year, Modern Family debuted in second place before claiming the title in the latest vote. Community has a chance to repeat this feat next season as it narrowly missed first place in its debut appearance. As it continues to gain awareness as the logical successor to NBC’s storied history of Thursday night sitcom icons, more and more staff members should fall in love with it.

Falling out of first place this season is Mad Men, which drops a couple of spots to third. We continue to be transfixed by the inner workings of Sterling Cooper. Along the way, Don Draper has become arguably the best television character of the 2000s. And the show’s in your face depiction of the sexism and racism that permeated throughout the 1960s offers marvelous insights into the supposed Camelot of that era. Season four offered innumerable shocks as the employees of Sterling Cooper were reduced dramatically by a financial crisis. Who stays and goes is still up in the air as we anxiously await the moment when the climactic events of the season four finale are resolved. Of course, we may not include Mad Men in next year’s voting, because there exists the terrifying possibility that no new episodes air in 2011. Dear AMC: please do not let this happen.

The rest of our top five is comprised of the last gasp of an old favorite and the debut of a staff favorite. In the eyes of many, Lost ended with a whimper rather than a bang as the show’s producers stubbornly refused to answer any of several hundred (literally) unresolved plotlines. Still, BOP was engrossed by a worthy series finale that answered the show’s true dilemma: how to give happy endings to constantly tormented characters. Lost was chosen as one of the best programs on television in five out of its six seasons with only season two, the back of the plane season, failing to grip us as a collective body. Warts and all, it was event television and will be missed.

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