Anyway, Duncan exited in the final moments of Episode Five*, and Rob returned in the opening scenes of Episode Six, which substantiates my theory that Jackman was standing in as the Guy Pearce type young heartthrob type.
*At least, he was meant to have exited. But in his final scenes, Montana kissed him at the railway station and after she'd left he changed his mind about leaving and hopped off the train. But we never saw or heard from him again and he was said to have left. Some of the continuity is a little iffy, I think. Unless it was implied that he'd changed his mind about changing his mind and got back on the train.
I think you're correct about Hugh Jackman being the heartthrob stand-in for Guy Pearce in the first five episodes.
I just presume we're meant to assume he got back on the train again and left.
The romantic entanglements are very fast moving and seem very fluid depending who's around. Rob and Montana were sweethearts. But then Montana and Duncan fell for one another while Rob was out of town. When Rob returned after Duncan left, he proposed to Montana and she accepted. But then she travelled to the States to look after an unwell relative, promising to return. Victoria Blackwood returned an episode later and Rob proposed to her. But then Herbert Elliot proposed to Victoria and she accepted. Until she didn't. And then she left town. It's a little head-spinning.
They were fast and fluid, but I think that was very much an intentional arc on the part of the writers that suffered in execution because they didn't have all that many episodes to play it out over. This is where I think season 4 would have benefitted from more episodes or a bit of restructuring. Guy Pearce was absent for the first five episodes, then only had two with Gabrielle Fitzpatrick before Montana was written out. That episode was followed by another Guy Pearceless episode, there was the episode with the opera singer (and Josh's uncle), then Amanda Douge was back as Victoria for two episodes. Then, it was the finale of the show.
Rob is my favorite character on the show. I liked the character of Montana a lot. While there was clearly an attraction between them, the Rob/Montana relationship always felt like they were forcing it. When I first watched the show, my take away was the Rob and Montana were in love with the idea of Rob and Montana and not actually each other. I went back and forth over whether that was supposed to be the take away, there just wasn't the same chemistry between GP and GF as there was between GP and AD, or if it was just my own fan musings as Rob/Victoria were my Snowy River OTP and I was disappointed that she had been written out. In season 2, it seemed like the writers had been intending initially intending to take the will they/won't they thing somewhere. There was the kiss on the bank of the river after Rob blew up the boulder that Frank had used to block it--resulting in Victoria accidentally shooting Rob in the rear after she got mad he flipped her over into the water and then he denied his actions saving her were nothing more than something he would have done for anyone. Later, in the episode in which the military comes to town and Rob almost enlists, we see Victoria jealous of his interest in Ruth (at the demonstration that starts off the episode and later when Frank counters her idea to invite Rob to the house with also inviting the American Girl.) Anyway, I wasn't sure which one it was.
Then, I finally saw season 4. I knew from recaps that Montana had left, Victoria had returned and Rob had proposed, but then she had left again. Recaps rarely give an in-depth replay of every single scene in an episode. A couple of times in the early episodes of season 4, when Montana and Duncan are discussing Rob, it comes up that she really hasn't heard from Rob and hasn't written him. While Rob is away, Montana is clearly drawn to Duncan (something more than just friendship). She confesses to Rob when he returns, and he thanks her for her honesty before heading off to the auction to buy the stables. The next episode picks up and we learn that Montana hasn't seen much of him. Rob is talking marriage though--putting down some roots since he has a business. The whole thing is just unromantic and more like he's doing it because he thinks it's time to put down roots and Montana is who happens to be around.
Then, the business comes up with Montana's sister being ill, the sister's fiancé being wounded, and her feeling like she needed to go home to help so they wouldn't lose the farm. There's a conversation with Jessie in which Jessie tells Montana to view the situation as a test of her and Rob's relationship and what it's really made of. It's a test that fails. There is one scene where Rob and Colin are discussing the situation. Rob tells Colin he made a commitment to him [with the business] and Colin makes a comment, standing behind Rob, that he also made a commitment to the woman that he loves. Colin can't see his face, but we can, and there's just this look of uncertainty/doubt that washes over Rob's face. Prior to that was a scene in the hotel where the McGregor men are eating lunch. Rob, whose appetite has been a running joke since the beginning of the series, isn't hungry. He's also half-hearted when Matt gives a toast to the engagement. Finally, there's the big scene in the stables with Rob and Matt and Matt asks Rob how he really feels in his heart (after Rob comments that if marrying Montana is what he really wants, why is the decision so difficult). Rob's answer to Matt's question is that he'd be proud for Montana to be his wife, but he's just not sure if he really loves her. Rob's answer to Matt answered the question I'd had for two decades; it appears I was right it was more of a case of being in the love with the idea and not being actually in love with the person.
Even though there are words about her returning, etc., it feels more like promises made at the end of summer between camp friends. You say you're going to write. You say you're going to meet up and hang out, but you don't. There seemed to be a certain hollowness to the words and a finality to Montana's departure. She tells Rob not to miss her, and even before Victoria comes back to town, he's already shown to be moving on from it. I do think the relationship with Montana was important for Rob's character growth, but in the end, she wasn't the one. He liked the idea of himself and Montana, but in practice, it was truly an out of sight/out of mind deal--and that went both ways on his part and her part.
It was good to see Victoria return. Although, in true Snowy River fashion, her return is the first time it's officially acknowledged that she'd even left. She and Frank had simply stopped appearing and not been mentioned again. Now we're told that she and Frank had both left Paterson's Ridge, but had fallen out and Frank had never arranged for Victoria to receive her share of Oliver's estate. She'd fallen on hard times, and was being forced to work at Jessie's hotel after trying to leave without paying, leading to some fun banter from young Biddie who works there and who Victoria had treated shabbily while staying there (Biddie was one of the applicants for the housekeeper's job at Langara, turned down because she was completely unqualified and ditzy to say the least.
The Victoria we meet in Season Four has changed and has more humility and less snobbery - something that the writing acknowledges. But she's still resourceful. She turned down Rob's proposal because she felt it was out of pity. But then she accepted Herbert's because he was solvent and she needed the security. But she came good in the end, even if she didn't stay to the very end of the series.
I loved that they brought Victoria back--I just wish they'd had her around longer and definitely have kept her around through the end of the show. Frank not ever giving her fair share of the estate and leaving her penniless was such an in-character thing for him to have done, even though he doesn't return himself. It was probably the inevitable conclusion of anything other than a will in which Oliver named down to the letter every last little thing Victoria was to get. (Which, Victoria did question in season 2 that there had to be another will. Oliver knew his son well enough to know better than to leave Frank in charge of it all. There was a gap of time between Oliver's certain death in the desert and Victoria's return from England that has had me speculating more than once if Frank forged a will and there really is another one in which Victoria was specifically left her portion.)
Of all the characters on the show, I think Rob and Victoria both grew the most. That is something I keyed in on more in my rewatch than my original viewing. When I watched the first time around, I was close in age myself to their ages at the beginning of the show (an article from when the show was premiering had them at 19). Watching as someone a lot older than the characters this time around gave a new perspective. Rob was obviously naïve at the start of the show, but so was Victoria despite how worldly she thought she was (and there's a great moment in season 1 between Kathleen and Danni where Kathleen points out to Danni that Victoria doesn't know as much as she thinks she does). Victoria starts the show as a spoiled, lonely, and bored rich girl. Clearly, something had happened to the mom/wife in the Blackwood family too, and my fan theory is that the mom's death contributed to Oliver turning his kids into what he did. With Victoria, that probably meant throwing more money and things at her to make her happy than really spending a lot of quality time (there's also a comment in the first episode that she'd been away at boarding school a lot of the time). Because the character was written out at the end of season 2, we didn't get to see as much of her growth on screen, but she's clearly matured when she returns in season 4, even if she's also still a work in progress.
Rob we get to watch on screen as he tries to get out from underneath the shadows of his father and brother and be a man in his own right. We see him grow some in season 1, but it really kicks off in season 2. The episode when one of the Snowy River Stage Coaches of Doom crashes in to river starts with him telling Colin, after Colin asks Rob what he believes in, that he doesn't know, he needs to live a little first. He has the sort of relationship with Ruth, the first woman he ever had any serious interest in besides Victoria. There's the relationship later with Montana. He almost joins the Army and goes through several rounds of growing pains in his relationship with his dad. Rob of season 1 was still a boy on the verge of manhood. By season 4, he has grown into a man (but maybe still has a bit more growing to do himself to learn how not to charge like a bull out of gate). I suppose, and this is true of both Rob and Victoria, they've gone from still being basically kids at the start of the show to being 7/8ths to 15/16ths grown ups at the end.
Even though the writers didn't keep Victoria around until the very end (which I think they should have--it was just the two-part finale to go and they could have worked her into that mess with the Morells), I feel like her return was the full circle event for Rob. They've both grown and changed and been through things, but in the end, she's still it for him.
There's a compare/contrast dynamic with Rob when he proposed to Montana and then she left and then when Victoria returns/he proposes/but she leaves again. Rob's proposal to Montana is more "guess we should get married since I have a business and I think I should put down roots." When he proposes to Victoria, it's about the love and the person though--he's loved her as long as he can remember, he would like for her to be his wife, he let her go once/not letting her go again. Later on, at the end of that episode, Rob tells Victoria that all he understands is that he loves her and needs her with him (compared to his questioning if he even really loves Montana). Then, when Victoria leaves to go back to Melbourne, her kiss is meant for Rob to remember while when Montana left, she tells him not to miss her.
As annoying as Biddie could be, I love how she was used as an interesting mirror, witnessing Victoria's return and departure, and, IMO, one of the biggest plot anvils/foreshadowing bits about Rob/Victoria in hand-wavy post-series future. Victoria wasn't great to Biddie when she was a guest in the hotel, but part of Biddie's animosity towards her was rooted in Biddie having a crush on Rob. At the beginning of "The Loaded Deck", she's trying her hardest to get Rob's attention while he's loading the feed on to the wagon. Then Victoria shows up on the coach and it's Victoria who immediately has all of Rob's attention. There's a nice brief shot of Biddie with her falling face watching them. When Victoria is about to leave, we see Biddie watching from the balcony of, anticipation on her face that her nemesis is about to be gone. Then, we see her face as she's watching that kiss between Rob and Victoria. We see her look disappointed and go back inside, and then come 5 o'clock, she's turned her sights towards Herbert Elliot. I feel that Biddie turning her attention away from Rob and onto Herbert after seeing that kiss is supposed to be signal that unless one's name is Victoria Blackwood, then Rob McGregor is off the market.
So, we had that anvil. Immediately preceding, we had Rob asking Victoria if they were going to see each other again, her asking if he wanted to see her again, his telling her yes but it goes both ways, and her telling him that it does (so, we have mutual agreement they want to see each other again). Then we have Victoria come out with her question about if at some other time, if they would have gotten married and lived happily ever after like in a fairy tale. After Rob says he doesn't believe in fairy tales, she says she does (so basically telling him if the timing had been better and so many things hadn't gone wrong...). He teases her about them not agreeing on anything, but then both say maybe next time and I don't think that was meant to be just taken as maybe they'll agree next time. There was another sort-of anvil in there with Rob being bad at managing his books and Jessie saying Victoria could be a manager in no time... This leads me to while I appreciate all the anvil throwing and foreshadowing for hand-wavy post series future, the show was ending. This was the last big arc for Rob since the finale was more about Colin. If we were going to do all that foreshadowing and since the show was ending, couldn't we have let Rob and Victoria have their happy ending on screen too? We saw Matt and Kathleen get their happy ending earlier in the show. Colin had his family in the end. Snowy River wasn't a show that always stuck a bow on every ending, and I liked that about the show in general, but not with this.
If I'd really really could have been in charge, I would have never written the Blackwoods out to begin with, but if I could have the power to make changes to just season 4 and had to have left it at 13 episodes, I would have gone one of two directions. In the first, I would have handled the last 3 episodes differently (and possibly part of "The Loaded Deck"). Herbert Ellioit's interest in Victoria seemed to have come out of nowhere and was just contrived for drama in the second part of her return. There was no indication at all in the past that he had any interest in her whatsoever and there was an age gap there. For option A, drop the whole bit with Herbert Elliot in "Difficult Times" in exchange for more bickering with Biddie and Victoria at the hotel. (Side note: Victoria spent maybe two nights in the hotel as a guest. It was Paterson's Ridge and the Railway Hotel was not a luxury establishment. I'm not sure how Victoria ran up that big of a bill in two days time that it was going to take weeks of work to pay off.) Rob gets is reward for capturing the horse thief, somehow convinces Victoria that pity isn't why he wants to marry her, throw a bow on a happy ending. Then, I'm not sure what I would have done with the last two episodes. Victoria could have been worked in to that, but although I found the episodes entertaining and would have been fine with them as a regular season finale or as just part of a longer season, I wish they'd done something different for the series finale. It felt like they spent a lot of time on guest characters in those episodes, and I would have preferred that time have been spent on the regulars.
For option B, I would have done some significant restructuring to the whole season. I would have brought a
not-penniless Victoria back sooner in the season, while Rob was still on the cattle drive and when Duncan Jones was around. Given that Duncan was Rob's best mate growing up, he would have known Victoria too and about Rob's feelings for her. That might have been an interesting conversation for Duncan and Montana to have. I would have kept everything with Duncan and Montana's attraction and feelings the same. When Rob returns home, the events are the same as what happened on the show, but Victoria is back too. Montana confesses to Rob, but then at the beginning of the next episode instead of bringing up marriage with Montana, we find that he and Victoria have been spending more time together..... and everything sort of blows up on Foundation Day.
I'm not sure if anyone cares as much or at all about my rambling about this show, lol. I sometimes have deep thoughts on old shows that I like to put down in to words. It was very much, and still is, a favorite of mine and I'm glad I got to watch it again in its entirety.
It's great to read the perspective of someone revisiting the show and I'm glad you've finally got to watch the final season.
