‘Pushing Daisies’ Gets A Push From Strike

New shows for the fall seemed to appear and disappear to fast to really build up an audience. The big surprise though is that the strike might actually have been a good thing for some newcomer shows, especially ABC’s Golden Globe-nominated "Pushing Daisies."

Before ending, "Pushing Daisies" was severely falling behind in the schedule and going way over budget.

"We needed a longer post- production time than we initially anticipated," creator and executive producer Bryan Fuller told Variety. "We were bumping against air dates, and were hemorrhaging money to pay for accelerated post production costs."

But the hiatus has now giving producers time to polish things up. So, instead of trying a relaunch "Pushing Daisies" and other shows this spring, the networks have decided to hold off and start fresh next fall.

"This was the best possible result," Fuller said. "We look at this year's nine episodes as a teaser season. It's a huge risk, but then it falls in the network's hands to really support the show and relaunch it. They made such a spectacular investment in the show creatively that I have every confidence they'll continue to stand behind us."

So, more time to polish scripts and get productions in order with a fresh fall start to rebuild the fan base. Is there a bad side here? Well, there is if you are one of the crew members. Those crews that have been out of work because of the strike are now going to be out of work even longer, forcing many to find new jobs.

"It's one of the unfortunate realities of the strike," says Fuller who sees this as "frustrating and disappointing."

The final pre-strike episode had a doozy of a cliffhanger that revealed that Charlotte Charles’s (Anna Friel) aunt Lily (Swoosie Kurtz) is actually her mother. Fuller made sure to throw it in the episode, in case it ended up being the season finale. Now what was once going to be resolved midway through Season 1 is now going to define the next season’s direction and Fuller couldn’t be happier.

"The time off during the break allowed me to rethink where we were going and flush out a more dramatic story," Fuller said. "It came out of a realization that if that's our cliffhanger, it couldn't go the direction it was going. Now it will have a much broader impact on the characters and the series. It's much richer than the original plan."

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