HITLER, FORD.
FORD, HITLER.
written by Donal Thoms-Cappello
directed by Ben Rock

Now that you've been introduced...

6 Episodes
Original Run: 1 Ep, 5/4/13
Playoffs Run: 5 Eps, 6/22/13, 7/6/13 - 7/27/13
SECOND PLACE PLAYOFFS WINNER

SUMMARY:  Hitler works up the courage to call his hero, Henry Ford; he's an admirer of Ford's anti-semetic writings, and congratulates him on creating a successful company without "the Jewish influence."  Hitler wants Ford to build more factories in Germany, and forcefully gets the Mayor of Cologne to agree to the plan. Meanwhile, Ford's son, Edsel, who doesn't share his father's dedication to quality, wants to close the Berlin plant altogether, a plan Ford is passionately dead set against.

SUMMARY:  While Ford is on the phone with FDR, Hitler calls Ford on his private line.  FDR overhears, and demands that Ford shut down his German plants.  However, Hitler tells Ford that he agrees with Ford's philosophy of making a car "for the people" and that he's planning his own "Volks Wagen."  However, he seems to have killed everybody who could make it... so he convinces Ford to take over the Volkswagen project.  Cars for the (German) people...and a tidy profit for Henry Ford.

SUMMARY:  Ford arrives in Germany, where Hitler - after dealing with a disapproving Eva - takes his new best bro for a drunken night on the town.  Towards the end of the evening, Hitler drunkenly plants a kiss on Ford.  As he plays the moment off, he points out that they've come to the ghetto where they keep the Juden.  Things suddenly turn dark as Hitler talks about Jews as the enemies of human progress.  He gives Ford a gun and points out a young Jewish peasant girl... and tells him to shoot her.  Ford aims the gun as the woman cowers.  Meanwhile, back in America, Edsel wonders how to get his father back without alerting the American government, who would rightly brand Ford a traitor.  And so, in trying to get a meeting with Neville Chamberlain, Edsel speaks with Winston Churchill.

SUMMARY:  Ford cannot bring himself to shoot the young Jewish girl - not only does she look all too human (Ford expected horns), but she reminds him of his lost love.  Enraged, Hitler takes Ford back to his bunker and demands that he come up with a new Volkswagen design by morning... or die.  Meanwhile, Winston Churchill convinces a manic Leni Riefenstahl to mount a mission to secretly rescue Ford and quietly spirit him back to America.  As morning dawns, Ford has come up with the Volkswagen bug... and Hitler, unexpectedly, loves it, and decides not to shoot Ford after all.  But there is an explosion: Leni is here for her rescue.  "Come with me if you want to live!" she cries.

SUMMARY:  Leni carries off her rescue of Ford, during which she also shoots Hitler in the testicle.  Six years later: WWII is in full swing.  Hitler still obsesses over Ford, putting a strain on his already-strained relationship with Eva.  Back in America, Ford's dealings with the German government are discovered, and Ford has been relegated to a boring office job while Esdel runs the company.  Ford insists his ideas were free for anybody who wanted them, but FDR shows him what his assembly line ideas have been used for... by showing him photos of Auschwitz.  Ford is horrified.  And things get worse for him when Edsel suddenly dies.  A year later, a desperate Hitler and Eva are in the bunker, and Hitler is on a shooting spree.  Eva takes cyanide just to get away from him.  Hitler is about to shoot himself... when he has another idea.

SUMMARY:  Many years later.  With Edsel dead and his faith shattered in mass production, Ford is aching for a revenge on Hitler that can never come... or so he thinks, until Leni appears and tells him she knows where Hitler is hiding.  Meanwhile, a disguised Hitler is hiding out in Argentina, and - having been rejected by Eichmann, who doesn't want to make waves or risk being caught - resumes his original calling as a painter.  Desperate for work, he accepts a commission from Rabbi Mevorach to paint a mural at his synagogue.  Ford arrives - and find that Hitler is now "Jorge the painter" a beloved member of the Jewish community... and, upon introducing himself, Ford finds himself reviled and chased away as the author of "The International Jew."  Hitler disarms Ford, and says that he's read the Torah... and has had a complete change of heart about the Jews.  He now sees the Jews as the Master Race, and plans to organize them to overthrow Capitalists such as Ford, and create a Socialist-Totalitarian Fourtch Reich in Argentina.  And Hitler calls Ford on their shared true motives... for all Ford's talk of market forces and profit and business, he, like Hitler, was simply motivated by ambition and conquest.  And Hitler happened because of Ford's ideas.  Suddenly, Hitler is shot by Leni.  And Rabbi Mevorach, who has heard Hitler's confession, and horrified that he has let the Devil paint his walls, tears down the wall and sets the synagogue aflame.  In the confusion, Hitler and Ford are trapped inside.  Hitler crawls into Ford's lap, oddly affectionate, as Ford shakily points a gun at his head.  And Hitler makes a strange confession: he only wanted beauty.  He saw beauty in order, and Ford's ideas gave him that.  But now he sees - and makes Ford see - that in changing the world, they stopped living in it.  Ford looks up, and sees the ghost of Edsel staring at him reproachfully, as a radio announcer says announces Ford's death, allegedly at his home in Dearborn, Michigan, mysteriously delayed several days for "personal reaons."  "Tell me eine story, Herr Ford?" asks Hitler, nuzzling in Ford's lap like a child.  Ford looks at Edsel.  At the gun.  He puts the gun down.  And, to Edsel, as the flames rage, begins, "Once upon a time..."