On their final date – an occasion so momentous, it had to be split over two episodes – Anthony asked Nadia to imagine that things were a little different.

"Imagine this was real life," he began.

"Imagine we'd been dating for the same amount of time" as they've been doing this weird experiment.

"If I asked you out on another date," he continued, "would you say yes?"

"I don't know," she said.

"We've got a problem," the Gundagai native replied, looking all stunned mullet. Yep.

Those three little words spoke volumes. All the couples were about to be separated so they could spend some serious alone time thinking about whether or not they want to continue as couples.

They'll let us know when they come back together for the final commitment ceremony next week – an occasion known, in MAFSpeak, as "the renewal of vows" (so called because after six weeks the first set of vows are really starting to show their age).

Nadia had been banging on about how she needed a sign of something more from Anthony because she wasn't going to pack up her life "for anything less than love". Again. (She did it once. It didn't work out.)

He kept pushing back that moving from Brisbane (where she lives) to Sydney (where he lives) was no big deal.

"It's not that daunting to me," he opined (he never simply speaks, he always opines).

"You pick up your stuff, you move somewhere else."

"So much bullshit," Nadia muttered into her dinner.

He tried to win her over by letting her know how seriously he took this whole social experiment thing.

"Don't you know I was disgruntled as well," he said of his pre-MAFS dating life. He was calling on every last reserve of racetrack charm. You could practically feel the warmth coming off the screen as her heart melted.

Elsewhere, the other couples had mixed fortunes.

Sharon and Nick seem destined for happily ever after (or at least until the next edition of New Idea comes out with a splash on their tragic breakup).

He presented Sharon with a photo album that preserved all the memories that his drinking might otherwise have obliterated. Shazza teared up.

"This present is better than any gift, it's better than any piece of jewellery," she told him, swiftly flipping past the images of Nick laughing into the porcelain bus and Nick at the strip club. "It means so much to me. This is perfect."

As she told her sister Michelle later in a beachside game of oneuptwinship, "he got his arts and craft on", and she was impressed.

All Michelle could offer in response was the letter Jesse wrote her, in which he confessed his secret desire to be a builder. Something about having seen a light shining through a door, and wanting to walk through that door but first she has to walk through the door because he's not sure it's safe because he is still trying to lay the foundations.

Or something.

"There's just so much to think about," Michelle told Jesse. Like where are you going to put the windows and will the place have hydronic heating or ducted.

Sean and Susan continued their merry dance of "I really would move for love, and I really do love you, but I really don't want to move". The solution to their dilemma is so bloody obvious: he just needs to discover iron ore on his property and she can become a fly-in, fly-out wife, and go home to her mates in WA every second weekend. Simple.

Vanessa spent her entire date squinting into the sun and pretending to be Victor Frankenstein. If only she could get a bolt of lightning to strike Andy, he might come to life.

If only they were on the "same energy level", she told him.

"There's no secret, hypo-energetic Andy that's going to pop out of a jack in the box," he shot back. Except it was more a gentle lob than a shot.

"I know. I keep waiting for one hypo moment from you."

More power, Master? No Igor. It's too late for this one.

If Vanessa's lament was for how little Andy had been willing or able to change, Alene was doing victory laps over how thoroughly she had been able to re-mold her little clay man.

"The Simon I was with on my wedding day is so different to the Simon who he is today," she said gleefully, adding that she was "proud of us".

He may have been poked and prodded to within an inch of his life, but Simon is apparently the sort of man who rather likes that sort of thing. "Put it this way," he said, attempting to find words for how he felt about Alene. "It's more than like." 

Which seems a lot more than Nadia might be able to say about Anthony. Sure, she might change her mind next week, but frankly, that looks like a long shot.

This horse has all but bolted.