Two (The Twilight Zone) - Plot

Plot

Few details are given about the war that has 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 immediately attacks, initially throwing pots and pans at him 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 flies 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 of him, but eats the chicken and is now also intrigued by him. She follows him into a barber shop and watches as he shaves 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 the skeletal remains of soldiers at the theater entrance, and they 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 pryekrasnyy (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 suddenly 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 pryekrasnyy (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 resembling soldiers but a bride and groom.