Two (The Twilight Zone)

Few details are given about the war that preceded the events of the episode. The voice-over suggests the time could be hundreds of years in the future or millions of years in the past. A female survivor of an apocalyptic war (Elizabeth Montgomery), her face dirty and wearing a tattered army uniform, stumbles into a deserted, war-ravaged town. She looks into some of the shop windows, pausing to examine a white dress, then finds a restaurant and goes inside in search of (clearly scarce) food. She finds a can of chicken, but before she can open it, a man also wearing a military uniform (Charles Bronson) walks in and eyes the food from the doorway. Recognizing his uniform as that of the enemy, she turns and attacks, initially throwing pots and pans and eventually engaging in hand-to-hand combat. After all attempts at defending himself fail, the man knocks her out and begins to ravenously eat the chicken while the woman lies unconscious on the floor. The man notices a single animal that survived the war, a dove, which flew away. He examines a calendar with a woman in a swimsuit on the wall, turns to look back at his opponent and realizes that he desires human companionship more than he wants to continue a now-pointless conflict.

He wakes the woman up. Speaking in English, he announces that there's no reason to fight anymore and gives her the remains of the food. The woman, not understanding English, is wary around the man, but eats the chicken and is now also intrigued by him. She follows him into a barber shop and watches as he shaves himself with leftover soap from before the town was destroyed. He tosses a towel to her, which she uses to wipe her dirty face. They leave the barber shop and wander to a movie theater. He stares at a poster for a wartime romance film, and turns to smile at her, again hinting that he longs for companionship. But hostility flares again as they spy skeletal remains of soldiers at the theater entrance, and they both snatch nearby rifles, simultaneously aiming at each other.

After a tense moment, the man turns, walks away and slings the gun over his shoulder. The woman follows him, and the two walk along the road. They stop in front of the store with the dress in the window and she mutters prekrassnyi (прекрасный), the Russian word for "pretty." He rips the dress off the dummy and throws it to her, indicating a doorway and telling her to put it on. She goes through the door, which turns out to be a military recruiting office. As she begins to undress, she notices the posters on the wall. The last one depicts enemy soldiers (her country) being held at gunpoint by forces from the man's country. She leaves and angrily shoots at him instead, burning part of his face. The man walks away, not understanding why she has all of a sudden changed.

Later, the man is changing out of his uniform into a makeshift tuxedo and has found two jars of food. He sees the woman peeking out from behind a car and yells at her to go away, to take her war somewhere else. She emerges from behind the car in the dress, and he realizes she's resigned herself to being a civilian. He throws her one of the jars and calls her prekrassnyi (прекрасный). Moving to face him, she smiles for the first time. With their guns slung over their shoulders, they walk away side-by-side along the road, no longer in uniform but resembling a bride and groom.

Production notes

This episode was actually filmed on the backlot of Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California, which was literally falling apart, due to mismanagement and disuse (the facilities were finally torn down in 1963). Very little set decoration was needed to embellish an "abandoned city" here.

References

Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgement Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "The Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble With Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander With Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

Two (The Twilight Zone)

Contents

Synopsis

Production notes

References

External links