Absolutely one of my favorite episodes. Maybe even close on the heels of Puma Man and The Outlaw (which has a similar premise).
I don’t think you can lay all the failure at Ireland’s cute feet, either. Sure she’s miscast and badly directed. But the writers also didn’t know how to show her character genuinely coming out of her cocoon and turning into the super-confident glasses-escaper she was at the end. As Mike remarks, she gets treated like a barge of medical waste through much of the story. Also, to be really nitpicky, they couldn’t let her be single and independent for a solid minute before Charmin showed up. Another type of storyteller could’ve wrung one hell of a horror-suspense tale out of Dude from another world wants you so bad that he stalks you all the way from his underground reality to yours. [shrug] Ah, well. What might’ve been…
The closing segment with them all being well-versed in “chick flicks” but in denial about it? CR-A-A-A-Z-Y. 