BLAKE ANDERSON: Shoot man, I don’t think you can ever anticipate such a thing—I guess I never thought this far into the picture. I don’t think we ever set out to fail, like “This is it,” but in season one we were definitely like, “Oh yeah, this is just a short dream.” That’s why when we were filming season one we were still living in that house. We were pretty sure we were just getting our rent checks paid by Comedy Central for however long the season went. We were by no means certain that any of this would last longer than one season.

Has it continued to feel like this personal production the entire time, or has it shifted into a more corporate feel at any point?

It’s always had the same feel because it’s always had the same nucleus of me and the dudes. It’s very much a baby of our brains and our brand. We’ve always worked very closely together in all parts of the show. It’s definitely changed in the way that anything that you do over eight years is going to change—you yourself change as a human—but yeah, it’s still just friends making a TV show.

I suppose then on the topic of this final season, were you trying to say anything special here? Judging by the first episode, it seems like you have the concept of wrapping things up and closure on your mind at least to some degree.

Yeah, I feel like this is the first season that we toy with the idea that we’re not these characters that are trapped in time where we don’t age. We definitely have Alice call us out and go, “Yo, seven or eight years ago this was funny and cute, but you’re getting older…” So time definitely creeps into our minds a bit. By the final episode we do manage to make a statement about what the show has meant to us as a group of friends. I think overall this season is just like all the others. We really didn’t want to rob our fans by totally derailing the show in order to make some sort of statement. The episodes are pretty much standalone, stupid, fun episodes.