In the white picket fence world of Marcus Welby, Sally Field guest stars as a party-giver--drinking and distracted while playing "Thoroughly Modern Millie" on the stereo--whose long evening dress catches fire as she's trying to start the barbeque (luckily, she's attended to in the burn treatment room by Russell Johnson, the Professor from "Gilligan's Island"). Season 3-Episode 4 of the long-running series was directed by Leo Penn and also features Jeane Byron (mother to Patty Lane, one-half of the identical cousins on "The Patty Duke Show") while offering a dual role for Field as twin sisters! For avid TV watchers, this is like hitting the jackpot. The crux of the plot is that the two Sallys are estranged, with one needed to provide skin grafts for the other. Field doesn't appear to have a hold on her role(s); she's directed indifferently as the bitter sister, while her burn patient is unceremoniously shot from her chin and nostrils up. Obviously, Penn's job was to keep things simple and make running-down-the-hallway shots as exciting as possible, but the visual asides are a textbook of TV clichés: numerous close-ups of a clock underscored with ominous music, the beeping of a monitor in the patient's room, masked doctors handing each other scissors, etc. Penn does a dizzying pan at one point from patient to her team of doctors that enlivens the narrative for about four seconds; otherwise, the episode feels so rote that one cannot watch without contemplating whether or not the actors are present only for a paycheck or were perhaps grateful for their employment.
