Can you talk about working with Danny DeVito this season? Does he make a lot of changes to your scripts? Does he ever come in and tweak lines?

Charlie Day: I don’t think Danny’s tweaks are intentional. He was great this year. Audiences will be really pleased to see some of the acting he has done. As writers, more than any other year, we just had a lot of fun with his character. I personally feel that it is some of Danny’s best acting ever. Some of the stuff he has done on the show this year is outrageously funny. I was a big Taxi fan. And I love a lot of his movies. But I think we passed a lot of those things. Maybe that’s just my own sense of humor. I think the fans will get a real kick out of Danny this year. I think we’ve really figured out a way to his strengths.

What are some of the things we’re going to get to see him do this year?

Charlie Day: Speaking of things we wrote last minute, one of my favorite scenes is where he and Dennis go to a swingers’ party. And Danny is saying how these guys are an elite swingers’ society. The audience will be expecting something out of Eyes Wide Shut. It turns out to be a bunch of sad old people around a buffet. Danny is just great in that scene. What are some of his better scenes?

Glenn Howerton: In the gas crisis episode, the three of us come up with a scheme about buying gas now, and then waiting and selling it later. Because gas prices keep going up, and up, and up. In the meantime, Dee and Frank are involved in this Bruce storyline. He is our real dad. Our mom gave all our money to him. I don’t know if you remember that from last season. Bruce has given all of this money to a Muslim community center. So Frank and Dee are convinced that he is working with terrorists. So, a lot of the stuff that Danny does in that episode is great. He goes around trying to gather Intel. All of his Intel is bad. He is using it anyway. He becomes more paranoid, and he starts to think that Dee is in on the whole thing. He ends up water boarding her, to get information from her.

Kaitlin Olson: That sucked.

Charlie Day: Speaking of big topics, there is also an episode we did about Health Care. We come to find that Dennis, and Dee, and Charlie, and Mac have no Health Care coverage. However, Frank, with his wealth, does have access to Health Care and medications. This is all sparked by Dee having a heart attack. Mac and I are fearful of not having coverage. But Danny, because of his ability to get medicine, over medicates. And the storyline deals with people taking all sorts of different drugs and prescription medications to solve their problems. Danny ends up taking as much medication as he can, and it sends him on a spell. He winds up in a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest scenario in a mental hospital somewhere.

His character has always been like that though, right? Didn’t he drop acid?

Charlie Day: He has always had an affinity for drugs. Now, he’s hooked on Cialis.

Rickety Cricket gets his head blown off in this episode you are shooting. Has he become your Wile E. Coyote at this point?

Rob McElhenney: Yeah. I think he is only in two episodes this season. Maybe three.

Glenn Howerton: Who pooped the bed?

Rob McElhenney: Right, he makes a cameo appearance in that one. He is still a reoccurring character that is a lot of fun. I like that he was a young priest. In the second season, he was an upstanding member of society. Over the course of the last three seasons, he has gotten more and more destroyed by these people. Just coming in contact with them has ruined his life. But there has to be a masochistic nature in him, too. That he keeps seeking out these people. Well…I guess we do sort of pull him in. He does end up being the butt of a lot of our jokes.

You talk about pooping the bed. How much of that is based on your own lives outside of the show?

Glenn Howerton: In that particular episode?

In all of the episodes.

Charlie Day: Just the poop part.

Glenn Howerton: No, none of it.

Kaitlin Olson: Good lord, that would be pretty terrible.

Glenn Howerton: Our lives would be pretty horrible. We don’t have time for these kinds of hi-jinks.

Charlie Day: I have a dog. He poops a lot.

You guys go to Philadelphia every season to shoot exterior scenes. How has that experience changed since the show has gotten more and more popular?

Glenn Howerton: This year was insane. It was great. I took a cab to my hotel. I got out of the cab, and it was ten o’ clock at night. I called these guys, “Where are you at?” Of course they were at a bar. The traffic was so bad, I decided to get out of the cab and walk to the bar. I literally could not walk down the street. It was insane. I have never experienced that in my life. I probably will never experience it again in my whole life. It was probably just that one street in Philadelphia.

Rob McElhenney: There has been a big difference this year. There has been a big jump from the third season to the fourth season. A lot of it has to do with the DVDs. And the downloading. It is a pleasant surprise. Regardless of our numbers on air, our audience is watching us on-line. If you look, we are the number two most downloaded show on Hulu. Of all time. I think that says a lot about our audiences. And who they are. They read sites like you guys.

Charlie Day: I don’t think Nielsen boxes do that adequate of a job. And I’m sure that every TV show is great. But I really don’t think they cover our audience. I haven’t ever met a twenty-year-old with a Nielsen box. And even if they had it, they probably wouldn’t use it. “Huh? I have to punch something in? Ugh. Forget it.”

You guys had a pretty crazy turn out at Comic Con, didn’t you?

Charlie Day: It was above what we were expecting.

Rob McElhenney: We were nervous. You don’t want to throw a party and have no one show up. We weren’t really sure. We saw the size of that room, and there were like four thousand chairs in there. We thought, “If we only fill up half of it, that’s still two thousand people.” But with half, it would still look empty. We walked in there that morning, and I could not believe it. It was standing room only. It was packed.

Glenn Howerton: What a great affirmation to know the fans were out there. And they were all in that one room.

Speaking of affirmations, you guys have been picked up for seventeen more seasons.

Charlie Day: That’s right.

What was it like to get that kind of pick-up? And are you guys already thinking about what you will have to come up with?

Charlie Day: It is going to be a lot of writing. We are going to hire Tyler Perry. He has banged out about four seasons already.

Glenn Howerton: And Madea is going to be appearing on the show for free now. We are very happy to have her.

Kaitlin Olson: She is so wonderful.

Charlie Day: We have jotted a few things down. And there are certain ideas that we are really happy about.

Glenn Howerton: I will think of things. Little ideas. I have to scribble them down, and keep them in a folder. Otherwise, I will show up on the first day of the writing sessions, and I will go, “I got nothing, guys!”

Charlie Day: That’s pretty much what you do every time we start the writing process.

Glenn Howerton: Its because I go back over my ideas, and I realize they were all shit.

Kaitlin Olson: “Nothing was good. I’m so bad at this. Why do they want me to keep doing this?”

With you guys having so many audience members On-line, are you thinking about creating any original content for them during your hiatus?

Rob McElhenney: We are doing that. We do have some. We have two of the writers that are on staff doing that. Just this week they launched the Paddy’s site. Which contains Paddy’s blog.

Glenn Howerton: That is all done through the FX site. That is how you get in there. It is pretty cool. They did a really great job.

Rob McElhenney: There is a lot of video stuff. And a lot of text stuff.

Do you guys enjoy having this stable of reoccurring characters like Cricket and Stephen Collins, that you can call up and pull back in when you need them?

Charlie Day: I think that is the charm of any television series. When you know and love this world, and it exists within this little twenty-minute world. Seinfeld was like that. So is The Simpsons. Even Cheaters, with all of their little lovable characters. How could you not do that?

Will we see the McPoyles this year?

Charlie Day: You will be seeing Margaret McPoyle. The McPoyle Brothers are two of the biggest actors we know, so we couldn’t peg them down this year.

What about Stephen Collins?

Kaitlin Olson: He is also working.

Glenn Howerton: He has a show on Broadway. We wrote a show for him, but he couldn’t do it.

You said there was a show that had to be pushed because of Danny. Is that something you will hold until next season?

Charlie Day: Yeah. It is really good. The reason we pushed it was because Danny’s Frank was just so funny in it. We didn’t want to have to write him out. So we decided that we would just save it.

At Comic-Con, you mentioned that there would be an episode where Nightman: The Musical happens. Is that still on?

Charlie Day: Oh, yeah.

You must have known that was funny, but were you surprised that it was such a big hit with your audience?

Rob McElhenney: We are going to beat that into the ground.

Kaitlin Olson: We are going to take that way too far. Until people stop honoring us with doing that song. So many bands.

Rob McElhenney: Yes. We have a whole musical devoted to that this year. The Nightman Cometh.

Did Danny push to get any of his musician friends on that show? I know he’s been pushing to have Mike Patton on the show.

Glenn Howerton: Danny was. I know that Patton was willing to do it at one point. I don’t know if that is still the case. We haven’t got anything for him at this point. But I do want to have him on the show. I am a big fan of his.

Kaitlin Olson: We do have Rob Thomas on the show this season, speaking of musician friends.

Charlie Day: He teams up with Sinbad the comedian. They make quite the team.

Rob McElhenney: I run into them in a rehab facility. They have ruined their lives with drugs and alcohol. And Sinbad has made Rob Thomas his bitch in the rehab center. And he has now set out to make me his bitch.

When you guys do The Nightman Cometh, will Mac and Dee be getting involved this time?

Rob McElhenney: Oh, yeah. Every character. I play The Nightman, bro.

Kaitlin Olson: I play a beautiful princess that works in a coffee shop.

Is there any show that you’d want to do a cross-over with?

Glenn Howerton: The British Office. Are they still doing that?

Kaitlin Olson: Could it be animated? I would like that.

Rob McElhenney: I Love Lucy? That would be interesting.

What about Trailer Park Boys?

Glenn Howerton: We saw that a long time ago. Years ago. We saw some of their original stuff. It is a Canadian show. But I haven’t seen too much of it. I hear only great things about it, I just haven’t been able to watch a lot of it. Which is a shame.

Charlie Day: Do shows really do that? I guess they do, huh?

Glenn Howerton: They used to, back in the 80s.

They still do it. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Two and a Half Men just did one recently.

Charlie Day:  Two and a Half Men and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That would be a great fit.

Last question, with The Nightman Musical, and the Song that Danny dances to in one of the older episodes, is there going to be a soundtrack?

Glenn Howerton: Yes. We are working towards a soundtrack. Surely.