Kate Manfredi and Dave Brewer

I've been nail bitingly waiting for the final season of McLeod's Daughters. This Australian soap was one of my deepest guilty pleasures because I obsessively watch Kate Manfredi and Dave Brewer fall in love. Despite the fact that their story has apparently come to an end, I can't help but root for them, as I still do for Buffy and Angel.

Kate, portrayed by Michala Banas, reminds me a little bit of myself. She is so transparent and all her feelings are openly expressed with every delicate frown and worried smile. Her patent insecurity, brash righteousness, blind dedication and loyalty, her ineptitude when it comes to flirting and use of feminine wiles, her super organizational skills bordering on OCD, her fixation on displaying her five-year plan on a chart on the wall where she can see it every single day...ooh lala! Now, if only I know the different wool classifications, agriculture theories, animal husbandry and farming what-have-you.

Of course, it would only be natural that she would end up with the hunky vet, THE Brett Tucker, who I think looks a little bit like James Franco. See below. Imagine my confusion while watching the The Great Raid.


For most of the season I had to watch Kate's three-month relationship with Dave's brother, Patrick. And so it is probably understandable how frustrated I was, when feelings accumulated over two telly seasons and more than a couple of telly years were confessed and happily reciprocated but crammed in only half of an episode, the final episode of the season and the last episode of Brett/Dave at that. And then the presumably budding relationship was broken off in Kenya and off camera, leaving me and my hyperactive imagination to fill in all the horrible details.

The time given to Kate and Dave to resolve their feelings was too short for my satisfaction. I mean, the greatest validation of their relationship had to come from Dave's ex, Regan, when she said that even she knows that Kate has never stopped loving Dave and when she theorized that Dave rejected her proposal due to his suppressed feelings for Kate.

This show has had its share of relationships going kaput. Tess and Dave did not last because she was in love with Nick, Jodi and Alberto's wedding was called off, Alex had to cope with Claire's death, Becky with Brick's, Alex and Fiona divorced because of her lies and his feelings for Stevie and Luke was dragged from Jodi to jail. After all these, I feel that someone would have to come up with a much stronger force to drag Kate and Dave apart. I know they have finished taping and have even sold the props and costumes but that does not stop me from concocting a more deserved happily-ever-after ending for these two.

Dave can come home after the end of his two-year stint in Kenya for he would want to see his brother. It is not that farfetched that he and Kate still have feelings for each other. They would reignite their relationship in the place where its first embers glowed. But Kate would be offered a great opportunity that would enable her to accomplish her five-year plan so she has to say goodbye to Gungellan and Dave. This time, Dave leaves everything to follow the love of his life in a bid to never be separated from her ever again. And they both join Tess and Nick in the Spanish spin-off novela set in Argentina, where Dave would conveniently find an equally fantastic development in his career as well. Later, Jodi and Matt also join them since Argentina is a much better hiding place and is farther away from the goons after them.

My fearless prediction does not only stem from my selfish desire to get what I want right now, but is based on truth, facts, telly logic and a little bit of telly magic. There are these rumors that some former cast members are coming back for the last season and Michala is leaving the show midseason. So Brett would not need to take that much time off from Neighbors to fill my appetite for even just another half hour of sappy twenty questions and braid-tugging. They don't even need to kiss for all I care. Though I could probably die happily if they get to wear again their outfits in the scene below, which is considered one of the soap's top ten memorable scenes, if not, I say, the most memorable of all. This time, I hope it is a real and more lasting conclusion for Kate and Dave and not just some awful dream slash nightmare.