The title is clever, referring to a tom-cat of a man and a mousey young woman.  Unfortunately, it sets up an expectation for an episode of suspense and thrills.  This is not that, and that is not this.  But it works out.

Narrator:  “Andrea Moffit longs for true love.  A man who is strong, handsome, and exotic.”  Maybe she should have longed for a cinematographer.  The first shots are of her dressed in white and and a man dressed in white standing in a white room.  OK, you might say she is very shy and this is symbolic of her desire to blend into the background unnoticed.  But the guy is a pharmacist — they are so extroverted they insist on standing 6 inches over you in the store.  It’s just a poor choice.

Carl asks her out, but she shyly says she is busy that night.  Her friend Elaine tells her she can’t afford to be picky and that Carl is a good catch.  But Elaine is also downing a handful of pilfered downers (and justifiably so) at the time, so she might not be the best judge.

That night as Andrea is curled up with a book, a cat comes through her window.  She gives it a bowl of water, but it prefers to check her out while she is showering.  When she comes out of the bathroom, she is startled to see a man in a short white robe.  Well, not startled — she barely registers surprise.  She should have been screaming at the sight of this intruder in her home.  Or at least howling in laughter at his goofy short robe.

She grabs the phone and he says, “Call the police.  Tell them that you’ve seen a man turn into a cat.”  Then he turns into a cat before her eyes.  And, unfortunately, back into a man.  With a smarmy French accent, he criticizes her coffee, insults the people of Turkey, touts his love-making skillz and, most egregiously, says his name is Guillaume de Marchaux.

Caught banging a sultan’s wife centuries ago, he was cursed to be a man only at night.  He says, “It is not such a curse.  I have spent centuries loving women, showing women how to love.  Women like you.”  He offers to leave but warns her she will never know the pleasures that only he can make a woman feel.  That’s all it takes, and they make the love.

Day 1 at the pharmacy, she is full of glee and probably morning-after pills.  TV Step 1 to beauty:  she has let her hair down.  She rushes home after work to make out with Guillaume.

Day 2 at the pharmacy is TV Step 2 to beauty:  she has ditched her glasses.  Elaine tells Carl that nobody changes that much unless sex is involved.  After work, she brings him a cat collar, but he hisses at her.  Later, as a man, he condescendingly explains that during his transformation into a human, the small collar world have choked him to death.

That night, he is still lounging around in that absurd robe for the third day.  Andrea shows him a negligee that she bought.  He dismisses it, and throws her coffee in the fire, calling it sewage water.  He insists that she go get some of that serious gourmet shit immediately or he will leave forever.  Stupidly ignoring this opportunity to get rid of him, she obediently heads out to Starbucks . . . to get a Frappuccino for herself; then to Dunkin Donuts for some palatable coffee.

Elaine just can’t stand the thought of Andrea being happy.  She has twice said said she wanted to be a fly on the wall to see what caused the change in Andrea.  With that Frenchman sitting around 3 days in a robe, she will not be the only one.  She goes to Andrea’s house, and Guillaume nails her in 20 minutes, beating my record by 3 months.

Andrea is furious at Guillaume for literally less than 20 seconds.  When he says it is time for him to move on, she begs him to stay.  He says he is going to Elaine, but Andrea asks him to stay one more night.  He continues to insult her until the downers she slipped into his coffee knock him out.

He awakens the next day as a cat, in a cage, in a veterinarian’s office.  Andrea asks to have him fixed.  He hisses and tries to claw her.

This works so much better than it should.  It seemed like another insipid episode with a dreadful sickeningly-sweet score.  It stars the narrator from the mediocre The Hitchhiker series.  Some performances are over the top and others are too staid.  And yet . . .

I expected the worst from Page Fletcher.  Not only is he best known from a weak series, he wasn’t even an actor in it.  However, he was amazing here.  Being from Canada, I don’t whether his natural accent is quasi-French or quasi-American, but he created a perfect archetype here of the condescending, parasitic European guy.  He not only creates a believably repulsive character, but that in turn makes Andrea’s love for him maddening for the audience.  Bravo!

Similar to yesterday’s Outer Limits, the ending here rewrites the tone of the episode.  Yes, the score is indeed awful, but there is a winking nastiness to the finale that, in retrospect, makes it all feel like parody.^[1]  I wouldn’t want episodes like this every week from TZ, but this was well-done.

Footnotes:

• [1] You’re not supposed to think about this:  What is Andrea really doing?  She is the one who made most of the bad choices here.  Guillaume is the one who has been cursed for centuries.  He inarguably changed her life for the better.  And she is cutting his balls off.