One of the greatest mysteries amongst the critics here at the TCA Press Tour is why NBC’s completely kick-ass Thursday night comedy line-up - “My Name Is Earl,” “The Office,” “Scrubs,” and “30 Rock” - isn’t one of the highest-rated line-ups on any network. I mean, seriously, that’s about as solid a two-hour block as has come around in years; every single one of those four shows is must-see TV for me, so it’s nice to know that Bill Lawrence, producer of “Scrubs,” agrees with me.

“Zach flew here from New York, and I came here all the way from my house, because I could not be more proud than to be up here with these four shows,” said Lawrence. “Everybody’s saying comedy sucks right now. These are three other comedies that I actually watch regularly. So screw the ratings, man, and I’ll have it out with you outside afterwards.”

Here are a few more revelations from NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up:

* What lessons did Tina Fey walk away with after surviving her freshman season at “30 Rock”? “I think we learned a lot about the tone of the show throughout the year and whether — you know, we want the characters to be believable enough that you still care about them but still be able to do crazy jokes with them. So I think we learned that as the year went. And think we, this year, are going to try to maybe — try to maybe do a little less, because the shows were so dense that sometimes we worried that it was almost going by too quickly for the audience. So we’re hoping to let things breathe a little bit.”

* The ever-sarcastic Lawrence got a big laugh when he said of his show’s upcoming final season, “I think this is the year that ‘Scrubs’ really becomes a big hit. We had always kind of geared our plan towards peaking in the seventh year. And now’s when we really roll out the promotional stops. You’re not going to believe some of the things we’ll be doing!”

* Braff, however, was decidedly less sarcastic when speaking of his last year as J.D.: “I think there’s something really cool about knowing it’s your last season. I mean, so many times, you know, by the time you get to the seventh season or the last, what could be the last season, you don’t know, and there’s something really invigorating about going, ‘All right. We’ve got 18 more.’ I think it’s really going to excite the crew and the cast. We’ve had almost the exact same entire crew for the entire run of the show, and you know, it’s cheesy to say, but it is a total family because we have grown up with these people essentially. I think to go in for the final 18 with knowing it’s we’re going out with a bang, we’re going out with the way Bill wants to end the show, I think, I’m really, really excited to do it.”

* Greg Garcia on the change in Earl on “My Name Is Earl”: “We were always worried about him changing too fast, the character, and so we tried to spoon it out a little at a time. But knowing where we were going to end last season with him going to prison, we weren’t afraid to go ahead and start giving him a lot of things that he wanted in life, and we did a little, you know, arc of three or four at the end where he actually started getting his life together. And the whole time, we knew we were going to take it all away from him and send him to prison, so that was kind of by design.”

* When Greg Daniels, producer of “The Office,” mused that he gets annoyed when people asking what’s going to happen next on the show, and that spoilers are a big problem, star John Krasinski ‘fessed up, “That’s my bad, by the way. Sorry about that. I needed a little extra cash, so I’m dishing secrets.”

* Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan will definitely be back this season, according to Michaels. Fey went for the joke and replied, “I’ve never even met Alec; we shoot everything directionally,” but Michaels acknowledged Baldwin’s importance to and love of the show and said, “I think he’ll be back.” When his use of the word “think” was questioned, however, he confirmed, “We know. I see him often, so there was no one moment when we made eye contact and discussed whether he would be coming back to the show, but I think he’s brilliant on the show, and I think he’s just absolutely essential to the show, and I think he knows that. And I think he’s part of the show, so I think he’ll be doing amazing work. I have a feeling the show will take a big leap this season.” (Tina Fey: “One way or the other.”)

* The hardest part for Daniels about putting out a comedy show? “Finding the English shows to copy. They have a different kind of VCR over there. It’s like a PAL system, and ours is like SECOM or something. So it’s hard to get a machine that will actually play them.”

* As a writer himself, it’s probably not too surprising to find that Braff has a respect for the writers of “Scrubs.” “They’re always working,” he acknowledges. “You know, as an actor, by the time you get the scripts, you don’t have any sense of how much work they put in to breaking the stories and all the time they put into that. Of course, I think, as an actor, the first thing you’re looking for are the jokes that make you laugh out loud, and on your first pass, you’re not necessarily thinking about all the arcs are perfect. I would imagine that would be hardest thing for them.”

* Jason Lee stayed pretty mum throughout the proceedings. All we really got out of him was that Earl wouldn’t be getting out of prison right away; otherwise, he deferred to “My Name Is Earl” producer Greg Garcia, asking, “I can’t really say what ends up happening to him — right?” Right.

Will J.D. and Elliott end up together at the end of “Scrubs”? It’s very hard to say, based on Lawrence’s comments, but it doesn’t sound like it. “This show is not Sam and Diane, it’s not ‘Cheers,’” Lawrence reminds us. “If you have a group of characters, which are male and female, are single, similar and put any aspects of romantic comedy, the thing to fear as a producer is that you know the promotions will be, ‘Will J.D. and Elliot…?’ And we didn’t want to be that show. I think we’re not that show. I think we got away from it, and I think it was an effective tool to end the year to have two dysfunctional people screw up their respective relationships. What we’re arguing about now amongst the writers is that we actually watch our fan base on the Internet, a bunch of websites about the show. People are pretty evenly divided on whether or not that couple ends up together or not. We’re just going to try and…I don’t want to say ‘give the people what they want,’ that’s too trite…but hopefully resolve the show in a way that people are satisfied if they want that couple to be together, and people are satisfied if they don’t want them to be together.”

Lastly, I quizzed the panels on whether or not they enjoy working on the special features for the DVD sets of their respective series.

“I think it’s awesome to do them because for us I think what has kept our show alive is that we have a core group of fans that have followed us from time to time so much so that sometimes the DVDs aren’t in your control and you have to actually make an effort when you’re busy otherwise to call up and say, ‘We want to do some features.’ Our sixth season DVD was going to go out with only one feature, and the writing staff reacted at the last second and we ended up just doing two and shooting them ourselves. For us, the few people that watch our show are so religious about it that to put out a lame DVD would be, I think, a cardinal sin.” - Bill Lawrence

“Our DVD for season three…we over-produced so much that there’s probably five or six hours of extra stuff on that. So the hard part is trying to edit that in the little break you get between seasons.” - Greg Daniels

“We have a lot of fun doing ours. You know, DVDs because of the lovely deal the Writers Guild struck doesn’t make us any money at all. I look at them as yearbooks for me. It’s the end of the year that you get and it’s like this is what we did for a season, and we have a lot of fun. Jason runs around with a camera and does a lot of back-stage stuff. For me it’s just a fun way to, you know, the fact that I can show my grandkids or my kids some day and point and say, ‘That where I was.’” - Greg Garcia

“We try load it — we have one coming out in September — we have to try to load it up also because I feel like anyone buying it it’s at the end of the show and we want to give them any extra stuff that we have, and we do — I listened to Tracy Morgan’s commentary, for the first 15 minutes there’s no evidence he’s watching the show at all. He’s just staring and talking and says, ‘Yo, this is where I came in,’ and I go, ‘Oh, he was in the room.’ There’s a little Internet stuff.” - Tina Fey

Michaels, however, got the last laugh: “I was thinking it might be time to buy a DVD player.”