Rarely do shows get to end on the creators’ own terms, especially those that are cancelled. And even though Bryan Fuller surely would have preferred a more robust ending to his much-beloved fantasy noir Pushing Daisies, the show didn’t exit on a cliffhanger or, worse, with the whimper of a total non-ending, as some do.
No, he was able to whip together an epilogue to tack on to the cliffhanger ending of “Kerplunk,” the last episode to air. But, as he says in an interview with TheTorchOnline.com, he couldn’t even shoot new footage. So he instead devised this CGI tour of the town of Coeur d’Coeurs and its environs—and of many of the settings used for the show, including the windmills, the convent, the Aquacade, the cemetery, the lighthouse, and, of course, the Pie Hole itself. This impressive work of digital wizardry would have cost him in the neighborhood of $90,000, Fuller says, but the visual effect houses liked the show so much, they only paid $8,000 for the shot. And, best of all, the whole sequence ends with a sweet moment between Ned and Chuck and a shot of Digby running happily through a field of daisies. It may not be the ending that Fuller envisioned, but it’s an ending. And in the television world, that’s no small blessing.
The video is included below, and I’m happy to say that it’s spoiler-free, thanks to some crafty editing and dubbing.