"Two" is the season 3 premiere and 66th episode overall of the

American television Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. , household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, with approximately 114,200,000 American households owning at least one television set as of August 2013. ...

anthology series ''

The Twilight Zone ''The Twilight Zone'' is an American media franchise based on the anthology television series created by Rod Serling. The episodes are in various genres, including fantasy, science fiction, absurdism, dystopian fiction, suspense, horror, su ...

''. The

radio adaptation Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine t ...

of this episode starred

Don Johnson Donnie Wayne Johnson (born December 15, 1949) is an American actor, producer and singer. He played the role of James "Sonny" Crockett in the 1980s television series ''Miami Vice'', for which he won a Golden Globe, and received a Primetime Em ...

in the

Charles Bronson Charles Bronson (born Charles Dennis Buchinsky; November 3, 1921 – August 30, 2003) was an American actor. Known for his "granite features and brawny physique," he gained international fame for his starring roles in action, Western, and war ...

role.

Opening narration

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 worn uniform soon enters the kitchen, and after a brief scuffle, knocks her out and eats 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. 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 dress in the smashed display window. Upon her saying "prekrasnyy", 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 Jingoism is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country's advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national inter ...

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 makeshift suit and has found two jars of peaches. He sees the woman waiting, peeking at him from behind a truck in the street below. He yells at her to leave, to "take your war to more suitable companions." She emerges from behind the truck wearing the dress. He tosses one of the jars to her and says "prekrasnyy". She smiles, and they walk away together.

Closing narration

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 ''CBS Radio Mystery Theater'' (a.k.a. ''Radio Mystery Theater'' and ''Mystery Theater'', sometimes abbreviated as ''CBSRMT'') is a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982, an ...

''. 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 Hal Roach Studios was an American motion picture and television production studio. Known as ''The Laugh Factory to the World'', it was founded by producer Hal Roach and business partners Dan Linthicum and I.H. Nance as the Rolin Film Company on Ju ...

Culver City Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, 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 ''Forbidden Planet'' is a 1956 American science fiction film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, produced by Nicholas Nayfack, and directed by Fred M. Wilcox (director), Fred M. Wilcox from a script by Cyril Hume that was based on an original film story ...

'', where

Robby the Robot Robby the Robot is a fictional character and science fiction icon who first appeared in the 1956 film ''Forbidden Planet''. He made a number of subsequent appearances in science fiction films and television programs, which has given him the d ...

exclaims that an Earthman's weapon was "a simple blaster".https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/quotes/?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu. Forbidden Planet, 1956. "Quotes."

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. *Grams, Martin. (2008). ''The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic''. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing.

External links

* {{The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes 1961 American television episodes The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series season 3) episodes Post-apocalyptic television episodes Two-handers