It didn't take long after the rise of TV commercials in the mid-twentieth century for comedians to take note of just how ridiculous most of those commercials were. Doctors selling cigarettes, housewives defending their laundry detergent as if any other detergent (the menacing "Brand X") were a threat to the American way of life — boob-tube marketing was a bottomless pit of material, and was bound to be soaked up by the sketch-comedy boom that followed shortly thereafter.

Parodies of such ads began popping up in the early '70s on shows like Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. But it was Saturday Night Live's 1975 debut that ripped the genre wide open. Madison Avenue's glib, cheeseball patter became fodder for regulars like Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner, and some of their successors — most notably straight-man kingpin Phil Hartman — built an entire career on it. As advertising grew more sophisticated, so did the satires that chased it. In today's irony-saturated comedy landscape, it's difficult to find a sketch show that doesn't do fake ads in one form or another.

In this feature, we've assembled fifty of the best. Unfortunately, many of SNL's most infamous are no longer available online, due to NBC's copyright-enforcing blitz a while back. But we did manage to unearth a surprising number of classics still lurking in the corners of the internet, along with plenty of timeless bits from Chappelle's Show, MADtv, In Living Color and SCTV. This list is an assemblage of our own personal favorites, and we encourage you to take us to task in the feedback section over what we missed. And now, without further ado, a word from our sponsors.

There's no more sure-fire way to kill something's intrinsic comedic value than to try to examine what makes it funny. The minute you start thinking, you stop laughing. So why, then, have Hooksexup and IFC.com devoted an enormous amount of time, manpower, monetary resources, server space and posh catered lunches to the pursuit of ranking the boob tube's finest sketch comedy offerings?

In part, we're here because magical new technology (*coughYouTubecough*) allows us to do more than just pontificate for paragraphs on end — now we can pontificate for paragraphs on end and provide audiovisual evidence to back up those pontifications. We provide the context, share our thoughts and feelings, and let you commence with the guffawing and, naturally, the disagreeing. After all, the comedy sketch — short, sweet, completely silly or shot through with social commentary — worms its way into the public mind like nothing else, and has easily made the leap to the web when other forms have faltered.

Any list is bound by the limitations set on it — consciously and unconsciously — by its creators: we kept our 50 selections to stuff that's appeared on television by choice, and to what's appeared in English out of necessity. One must also bear in mind the availability of material; who knows what comedic treasures are lost to us because they simply don't exist anymore?

But of the sketch comedy that remains viewable, this is some of the best. Is the list definitive? That's for you, the audience to tell us. And we're sure you will, loudly and angrily. Before you do you, though, remember: it's comedy. Best not to overthink it.