Rob is also directing some big budget movie, I forget which.
Bottom line is that FX probably pays ####. They love doing the show but have been doing it for 13 years now and are finding opportunities to make real $ somewhere else. As much as we love this show, it's a basic cable program that no one watches.
So, in order to keep it going, they need to figure out ways to do it in even less time. The bathroom bottle episode, the all-female episode, the clip show are all ways to get episodes done with limited time or some of the cast unavailable. Remember, going into the season, we didn't even know if we were going to have Dennis at all. The key is not so much to compare it to prior seasons, you have to compare it to no show at all. That's the alternative now.