The Offering (18 Feb. 1990)

Director:

Ernest D. Farino

Writer:

Dan Simmons

Stars:

Orson Bean, Robert Krantz, Bob Larkin

Cast

Episode cast overview:
Orson Bean	...	Dr. Hubbard
Robert Krantz
Bob Larkin
Karen Hittelman

Storyline

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Genres:

Horror

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Details

Release Date:

18 February 1990 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Laurel Entertainment Inc.

User Reviews

The search for a cure

A man is hospitalized after a bump on the head and stumbles upon the real cause of cancer...

"The Offering" is a very misleading title for this episode. One has to wonder where it comes from because there's nothing offered to anyone or anything in this episode. An ordinary man is able to see alien beings that implant cancerous tumors into unsuspecting people and spends the rest of the episode trying to figure out how to stop them. That's it. Where or when an "offering" is made is anybody's guess.

"The Offering" also suffers from bad plot holes and some events that are pretty far-fetched. The alien beings that are revealed to cause cancer are never explained. We never find out why they're here or why they do what they do. The episode could have really benefited from this as it's hard to figure out what the aliens are supposed to be. The aliens also like to implant the "tumors" in people's necks. If that's so, then how is it that people can get cancer in almost every part of their body? The aliens never attempt to attack the main character. If he can see them, wouldn't he then be a major threat to them? The doctor is shown to have a cancerous slug living inside him at one point but this is never explored or revisited. Lastly, the most unbelievable plot point of all is that the hero just waltzes right into a radiology lab and steals an isotope. What kind of security do they have in this hospital anyway?

I do applaud "The Offering" for attempting to make sense of a modern day health problem but that's all I can really give it. The monsters are unrecognizable, it's far-fetched, too many loose ends are left and the ending is even more boring than the rest of the episode. This was definitely not Monsters finest hour.