The episode, to be aired in the upcoming May “sweeps” period, shows Mullah Omar living in a mud hut outside of Kabul, trying to reinvent himself as a painter and a handbag designer.
Omar, seen creating a psychedelic canvas much in the style of the 60’s artist Peter Max, blames his business manager for the Taliban’s collapse, but says he is excited about this new phase of his life.
“Right now, I’m just spending each day trying to find out who this cat named Mullah Omar really is,” Omar says.
The segment with Osama bin Laden, taped in his underground cave outside Tora Bora, offers even more surprises.
Bin Laden is seen as an exasperated, befuddled family man, trying to cope with a cave overcrowded with wives, squabbling teenage children and a menagerie of incontinent pets.
The bin Laden family seems uninhibited by the presence of cameras in their dwelling, forcing VH1 to bleep out expletives more than eighty different times.
In one sequence, bin Laden’s son attempts to show his addled dad how to use a video camera so that he can tape another one of his spooky videos. In another, bin Laden “loses it” after two of his children squabble over use of the cave’s one remaining cell phone.
“I love you all to pieces,” bin Laden says, “but you’re all [bleeping] mad.”
