Two (The Twilight Zone)

"**Two**"
"Two"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 1
Directed by	Montgomery Pittman
Written by	Montgomery Pittman
Featured music	Nathan Van Cleave
Production code	4802
Original air date	September 15, 1961
Guest appearances
	Charles Bronson as Man; Elizabeth Montgomery as Woman;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Obsolete Man"	Next →; "The Arrival"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

Last updated April 06, 2024

"Two" is the season 3 premiere and 66th episode overall of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . The episode stars Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery.

Opening narration

This is a jungle, a monument built by nature honoring disuse, commemorating a few years of nature being left to its own devices. But it's another kind of jungle, the kind that comes in the aftermath of man's battles against himself. Hardly an important battle, not a Gettysburg, or a Marne, or an Iwo Jima; more like one insignificant corner patch in the crazy quilt of combat. But it was enough to end the existence of this little city. It's been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year, as man used to measure time. The time: perhaps a hundred years from now, or sooner. Or perhaps it's already happened two million years ago. The place: the signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place is the Twilight Zone.

Plot

A woman wearing a tattered uniform stumbles into a deserted city. She spots what was a restaurant and finds a can of chicken in the kitchen. A man in a different, well-worn uniform soon enters the kitchen, and after a brief scuffle, knocks her out and eats half the chicken. He later wakes the woman by dumping a pot of water on her face. He says there is no reason to fight anymore, as there are no more armies, but eventually realizes that she cannot understand him and departs. She eats the canned chicken he left for her.

The woman tracks him down, and they wander down the street, coming to a movie theater. He stares at a poster for a wartime romance film and turns to smile at her. They find the skeletal remains of soldiers at the theater entrance and abruptly grab the rifles of the dead owners, simultaneously aiming at each other. After a tense moment, the man turns and walks away, slinging his weapon over his shoulder.

The woman follows him, and the two walk along the city street. They stop in front of a store with a cocktail dress in the smashed display window. Upon her saying "Prekrasnyy" (Russian for "beautiful"), he hands the dress to her and tells her to put it on. She enters a recruiting office next to the department store to change into the dress, but then she notices the jingoistic enlistment posters on the wall. She grabs her rifle, exits the office and angrily shoots at him twice, but misses. The man gets up, looks at her incredulously, and walks away.

The next morning, the man has changed out of his uniform into a tuxedo without a shirt and has found two jars of peaches. He sees the woman waiting for him, peeking up from behind a truck in the street below. He yells at her to leave, to "take your war to more suitable companions." She steps out into the street, wearing the dress. He joins her, tosses one of the jars to her and says "Prekrasnyy". She smiles, and the two walk away together.

Closing narration

This has been ... a love story, about two lonely people who found each other ... in the Twilight Zone.

Music

An abbreviated version of the music for this episode, composed by Nathan Van Cleave, served as the basis for the opening and closing music for the radio drama CBS Radio Mystery Theater . The episode relies heavily on the music as there is very little dialogue throughout.

Production notes

This episode was filmed on the backlot of Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California, which was falling apart due to mismanagement and disuse (the facilities were finally torn down in 1963). Very little set decoration was needed to create the illusion of an abandoned city. The interior bracing that holds up the facade is visible through the second storey windows in the opening shots of the episode and the credits.

The sound for the "blaster" was taken from Forbidden Planet , where Robby the Robot exclaims that an Earthman's weapon was "a simple blaster".^[1]

Related Research Articles

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References

↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/quotes/?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu. Forbidden Planet, 1956. "Quotes." ^{[ user-generated source ]}

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 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

"Two" at IMDb

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[1] ttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/quotes/?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu. Forbidden Planet, 1956. "Quotes." ^{[ user-generated source ]}

[1]

v t e The 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" "Judgment 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" "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"