Romance! Murder! Special effects! Whimsy! In a shocking turn of events, this week’s Pushing Daisies featured all these things. Ned and Chuck pushed the boundaries of their romance. Olive figured out who Chuck is and befriended her aunts. An airplane crashed into a building opposite The Pie Hole. What did it all lead to? Follow the cut to read the full details.

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Young Ned is still lonely at the North Thrush School for Boys. While the others play their reindeer games, Young Ned was sitting by himself under a tree and remembering his best friend – Digby the dog. Coincidentally, back in Cur de Cur, Digby was thinking of Ned and how much he missed him. Digby decides to go find Ned and ventured into the unknown. Along the way, he passes a burning building and triggers the fire alarm call. What a clever pooch. My cats know to scratch at my door until I feed them in the morning. That’s clever in its own way, yes?

Digby does find Ned. They see each other across the field and run to each other in slow motion. Of course, their reunion, as Jim Dale tells us, was bittersweet as they both remember that they can’t touch at the last moment. But it was enough, we are told. Digby vowed never again to be separated from Ned. Currently, and coincidentally, Ned vowed never to be away from Chuck. And Chuck vowed never to be away from her aunts. To that end, she continues cooking them pies with homeopathic mood enhancers baked inside.

Chuck tells Ned that she’s been having more vivid dreams since she came back to life. But before she can get into them, she notices that Ned’s face is covered in stings. Ned shows her why – he’s set up bees on the roof for her, one of her favorite hobbies. Chuck is especially excited that they are breaking rules by having bees on a roof in the city and dubs them Urban Honey Pioneers. Unfortunately, the couple can’t hug. Sad face.

Olive is struggling to get into The Pie Hole, frustrated that the man she loves, Ned, loves someone else. Digby opens the door for her. Olive met Chuck’s aunts last week and now believes that Chuck has faked her death. In the kitchen, Ned spots the pies Chuck baked and Olive, knowing they are for the aunts, makes sure to intercept them from the delivery boy to deliver them herself and get to the bottom of Chuck’s mystery.

As Olive gathers the pies, a homing pigeon smacks into The Pie Hole’s window. Olive rushes out with Chuck and Ned close behind to pick up the poor (dead) creature. Olive tries to get Ned to hold it and check on it, but of course he demures. Emerson walks up and in that moment of distraction, Olive pushes the bird and bumps into Ned, so it jumps back to life. Of course, the one minute clock is now ticking until something else dies. Emerson is pretty worried and asks Ned if he needs to run. What’s the exchange rate on a bird’s life, anyway? Ned’s more concerned for the nearby squirrel. Olive is cradling the bird and Chuck and Olive begin a game of inferring and referring to the fact that Chuck has a pair of bird-loving aunts. Just then a dead bird drops out of the sky. Oops.

The second bird to crash makes everyone look up in the sky just in time to see a crop-duster crash into the apartment building across the street. Emerson goes over to investigate so that he can potentially earn some reward money, dragging Ned along and Chuck follows. The Narrator tells us this was the living room of one Mr. Conrad Firth. There is a distraught young man staring at the plane who Chuck tries to comfort. Then she trips on a piece of rubble and Ned heroically leaps back. Conrad catches her. There’s some sort of connection and when Ned and Em decide to go to the morgue to talk to the pilot, Chuck opts to stay behind.

The pilot, the Narrator informs us, was Braden Caden and 17 minutes after he died, his life insurance plan for his wife was rejected. Before anyone could even make a claim. Becky, his wife, is at the Morgue Attendant’s office. She doesn’t believe he would have killed himself. Em arrives to talk to the dead pilot but this time the Morgue Attendant asks for a bribe. Ned and Em get some privacy, wake up the pilot and he lets them know that he was hijacked. There was someone else on that plane before it crashed!

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Olive heads over to visit the aunts in her work to expose Chuck. She shows “Pidge” the pigeon to Aunt Vivian (the mousy one with black hair) and Aunt Lily (the eye-patch one). The pigeon has a message on its leg so she encourages Lily and Vivian to heal it and then they can celebrate by going to get some pie (at the Pie Hole where they would see Chuck). But… Olive already brought them a pie. Poop, she didn’t think that one through.

Ned and Em head back to the apartment/scene of the crash. They notice a bad smell. The follow it to a crate that they open, only to find a man stuffed inside. The hijacker? When they wake him up, he explains that HE is Conrad and he was just sitting there in his apartment when a plane landed on him. So if he’s Conrad… the hijacker is with Chuck!

Chuck and the hijacker are eating some pie at The Pie Hole. He’s talking about how difficult it’s going to be to start over, but Chuck says that she recently started over fresh and she likes it. He had touched her hand during this and she withdrew, but now Chuck asks him to do her a favor and let her hold his hand with her eyes closed. He agrees, she does so, and imagines she’s holding Ned’s hand. Unfortunately, the real Ned sees this through the window. Em and Ned enter and confront the hijacker but he runs for it. They chase him out the back door and Ned grabs him… but he keeps running, leaving behind a prosthetic arm in Ned’s hands!

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Ned asks Chuck what’s up with her holding his hand? She explains that she was imagining holding his hand. Yeah, but he’s an escaped convict. Em says they’re gonna need shovels.

The Narrator tells us about the hijacker. His name is Lemuel and he was an employee of an energy company, involved in stealing from the company. One night he went to shred some key documents only to lose his arm by not being careful. He was caught and sent to prison. His cell-mate and he became friends.

Cut to our trio of Em, Ned, and Chuck digging up Lem’s now-dead cellmate. Ned is about to reanimate the decomposing old man, when Chuck puts her sunglasses on him for a bit of dignity and to spare us the viewers from any leaky eyeball shots. Em asks him where he buried his loot. Somehow he’d worked out that this guy had buried money and that’s why Lem broke out of jail. For good karma and a shot at getting into heaven, he tells them he buried it in a certain windmill.

Olive and the Aunts are fixing up Pidge. With some ribbon and a bejewler, they give him a new, healthy wing from one of their taxidermied birds.

The trio go to a real estate agent to track down where this windmill is. However, it seems Lem beat them there as an old lady lays sprawled out in her chair, staring to the sky.

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Ned touches the lady to revive her. Nothing! He touches and prods her and she wakes up. She was just sleeping. She tells them about the Von Rowen Mill and gives them a map. She informs them another gentlemen had just been in there asking for the same directions. Then she falls back asleep.

The Narrator informs us that Olive’s disdain for Chuck was now split by her friendship with Aunt Lily and Aunt Vivian. She doesn’t want to hurt them. Pidge chooses this moment to fly out the window and Olive chases after it, calling for the Aunts to follow her. But are they too afraid to leave their house?

Meanwhile, at the windmill in question, a young woman (played by my secret crush Jayma Mays) named Elsita is waiting to fall in love. Lem knocks at the door and tells her that he’s there to photograph historic windmills. She lets him in even though she says she knows he’s lying because she’s bored. Behind Lem’s back, we see an axe.

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Aunt Lily is driving Vivian and Olive (singing “Birdhouse in your soul” in the backseat) and following Pidge.

Ned, Chuck, and Em are in Ned’s car, heading for the windmill. Chuck and Ned fit in some discussion about their situation much to Em’s consternation.

Lem is tying up Elsita to a chair. She suggests the one-armed bandit put his axe down to tie her up better. She notices he tied her bonds in little bows like you’d tie your shoes. She tells Lem that she was born into windmills and hates it because you’re always just waiting. Waiting for the wind. Lem asks if it’s wind she’s waiting for? Lem is in a hurry though and begins hacking up the floorboards.

Olive is hanging out the moving car window calling for Pidge. Pidge again, hits a window. The window of the windmill. Elsita slips out of her bonds (easily) and runs to “her bird”. Lem says it’s his bird. Do they know each other? Olive and the Aunts also enter, laying claim to the bird.

A flashback enlightens us. Jackson, Lem’s cell-mate, had buried treasure at the windmill one night and was interrupted by Elsa. They instantly fell in love, but Jackson was arrested at that moment. Elsa and Jackson corresponded by messenger pigeon for 20 years. Lem and Elsita had each taken over the deceased couple’s responsibilities and gotten to know one another, all the while thinking they were talking to the older generation. Lem also reveals that when the plane crashed, the pigeon had been with him and went through the propeller, leading to the damaged wing. Elsita reveals the location of the buried diamonds. They’re hidden in her wooden leg.

At that moment, a knock on the door interrupts the story. Olive goes over and sees through the peephold that it’s Emerson, Ned, and CHUCK! She can reveal to Lily and Vivian that Chuck is in fact, still alive.

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Olive, thought severely tempted, does not let them in. She slips out and explains she was there for a pie delivery. Chuck knows what pie Olive is talking about and notices her aunts’ car and understands, gratefully and quietly. Olive slips back inside and quickly excuses herself, Lily, and Vivian out the back door. Chuck asks Ned to take a moment to remember all the things he’s learned about her, fearing that she may be about to be exposed and everything will fall apart. Lily is driving herself, Olive, and Vivian away and for a moment thinks she sees Chuck in her rearview mirror, but with the pass of a windmill arm, she is gone and assumes it was her imagination.

Emerson enters the windmill, pistol drawn and commands Lem: “Hand up!” Lem is arrested but Ned and Chuck are amazed at how Elsita and Lem are clearly in love and that love conquers all. The lesson we learn is that there is always a way to work around obstacles. To that end, Ned has procured a pair of bee suits and is able to dance with Chuck on the roof. When he dips her, it is clear to Chuck what he’s done: “You caught me.”