W…T…F…
Every episode I think ‘well it can’t get any shittier than this. I’ll check the next episode out’ and somehow it always manages to suck just a little more. I think the only reason I’m still watching is just to see how bad it can get.
This episode will be hard to top however. I wait with anticipation.
Probably.
I just find it far more interesting if the social structure itself is what causes the problems, as opposed to deliberate shit-stirring by those in power. To put it another way, to me watching people try to live in a fundamentally unworkable system is interesting. Watching an authority figure with absolute power make a workable system unworkable is much less so.
Religiously mandated procreative sex with zero onus to keep the woman involved, well, involved isn’t exactly taxing. I figure most guys, no matter their age and assuming no pathology, would have any problem whatsoever rubbing one out every day and procreative sex is about that involved and requires about that much effort–maybe less, since you can get the wife to do the erecting bit. Bill, on the other hand, is expected to actually have modern day style sex, which includes foreplay and the expectation it’ll last longer than a minute or two and also includes (2/3 of the time anyway) the expectation of oral as well. Yeah, that might rather require Viagra. Also, as soon as a wife got pregnant back in the day that was a great excuse not to have anything to do with her sexually until the baby’s born and she’s back in the saddle, so that time would be better spent servicing another wife who isn’t pregnant. I also suspect that post-menopausal wives got very little lovin’. Why bother, since they can’t have babies? Bill doesn’t get to duck out of nailing Barb just because she had a hysterectomy, but a hundred years ago I bet he’d ignore her unless he was in the mood to be with her.
I wouldn’t put TOO much faith in that “celibate” story. I have known plenty of health workers here who have remarked on the high VD rate among the monks. 
[My highlighting.]
Are you making a general comment about oral sex or is something that’s been discussed on the show? There might’ve been one or two episodes I partially slept through but I think I would have remembered it if this come came up.
In one episode Bill was having intimacy problems with Nicky (I think because she was just not in the mood due to whatever cunning little scheme or secret scandal she was concealing in that particular episode). He broke a taboo and discussed the problem with Margene (with whom he has the wildest sex life) and she suggested he give Nicky oral pleasure to Nicky like he does with her and, presumably, Barb since he admitted that with her it was always ‘wham bam thankee ma’am’. When it’s Nicky’s night again he goes down on her for the first time.
She absolutely freaked out, but not in a good way. She thought it was an insult, not so much for any religious reasons (i.e. the fact it’s non-procreative- she was on birth control pills anyway though he didn’t know it) so much as she just didn’t like it and also felt he didn’t want to look at her face while they had sex.
Incidentally I thought one of the most sympathetic plotlines was when he had his “affair” with Barb.
A Laotian friend told me that Buddhist monasteries where she was a girl were notorious for being located next to brothels. No idea if it’s true. With Mongkut I think he probably was celibate though, not for any particular religious devotion (one of the few accuracies in The King and I is that he really did have “very scientific mind etc. etc.”) but because he was essentially there as a prisoner of his half brother who had cut in line to the throne.
That Mongkut, the future Rama IV, was a virtual prisoner in the monastery is quite an exaggeration. And the belief that Rama II “cut into” the throne is generally regarded as bunk, perpetuated by contemporary Westerners who did not understand the intricacies of choosing a successor in old Siam.
Chetsabodin, the future Rama III, was 16 years older than Mongkut, the future Rama IV, and had long played an active role in the government. But the former had been born to a concubine, the latter to a full queen.
As David K. Wyatt relates in his excellent Thailand: A Short History:
**Contemporary Westerners considered Rama III to be an illegitimate son son of Rama II, even a usurper. It was not that simple. For hundreds of years, Siamese had accorded higher status to princes born of queens, particularly queens of royal blood, than to princes born of concubines. But in law and in practiceall sons of a king had some claim to the throne, and it was up to the accession council that meton the death of a king to choose his successor.
What seems likely is Rama II knew he woud die soon and, convinced that the accession council would choose Chetsabodin [because of his already vast experience and expertise with governing], desired to protect Mongkut from political intrigues – and perhaps the internecine conflict that might follow the elevation of a concubine’s son to the throne. Had such a conflict occurred, Chetsabodin would have won with the support of the powerful Bunnag family [who remains a powerful force in Thailand even now in 2010].**
Other sources fully agree. (Bracketed comments above my own.)
By all accounts, Rama III himself was never entirely comfortable with his role as king, could never shake a nagging doubt that Mongkut, whom he remained close to, really should have been the one chosen and constantly insisted he would have been had it not been for his youth and inexperience. He performed many actions that signalled to his subjects that he considered Mongkut his heir-presumptive, such as inviting his brother to choose objects from the traditional palace of the heir-presumptive to furnish his new quarters in the temple, which he himself named Bowonniwet, the name being a play on the name of the palace traditionally occupied by the heir-presumptive (all of which may not sound like much to a Westerner but is chockful of symbolism to a Thai).
The young Mongkut would have made a terrible king. He used his time in the monastery – Wat Bowonniwet, which is still very much in existence and just behind the present-day backpacker enclave of Khao San Road – to good advantage. He was there at the behest of his father anyway, not his brother. I would call any Western attempts to portray him as a sort of Count of Monte Cristo are sadly misguided and ill informed.
Although he may not have entered the monastery on his own volition, he soon threw himself into the role, disliked what he saw in the various monasteries, and became quite a rofrmer, founding a new, more austere sect that continues to this day (and is still based in Wat Bowonniwet).
He was very active outside he monastery and would have had many an opportunity for a dalliance. Not saying he did, just that one should not apply traditional Western romantic notions to an extremely esoteric society for the sake of a good story.
Thanks for the info, S.S., I stand corrected and withdraw most comments, save for the factual ones that he was a monk for most of his life and then had 80 children in 17 years.
This one though- bolding mine-
would imply that he was celibate however; not to have been would have been rather hypocritical and the record doesn’t indicate he was.
Out of curiosity, getting further off-track but it’s a question not worth it’s own thread- how do Thais view The King and I? I’m guessing that
1- Most don’t think about it one way or the other since it’s a 50+ year old movie
2- Most have more pressing concerns than any movie
3- For those who do, it’s not exactly in the running for “Official National Epic”
but was it ever banned? Is it viewed like black people today view minstrel shows or more like women today view I Love Lucy (i.e. amusing but completely unrealistic) or like gays view Cruising or is it just not viewed at all? I remember that when Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat filmed Anna and the King they encountered problems even though it was at least slightly closer to the actual people (i.e. Rama IV was played by an Asian and it was filmed on location at least) and was wondering if it had to do with KING & I or the Rex Harrison/Irene Dunne movie (in which Harrison is actually a far less cartoonish character than Yul Brynner).
Hehe. I already answered that in this thread of yours some years ago. (Mine is the last post.) 
To add to that, I’d say it’s not an overwhelming obsession with most Thais, but don’t expect it to be shown here anytime soon. I do recall reading a report of some Thai prince meeting Yul Brynner backstage of the play on Broadway one time, and he seemed to have liked it.
Also, I can say what is considered hypocritical in the West may not be so here. There are many holy monks in Thailand who seem to have no conflict reconciling their sexual affairs, both male and female.
I should point out separately that no, it was not filmed on location. Thailand refused permission. They had to film in Malaysia.
Just saw this last night. Agree that it’s gotten too cartoonish, with the plot holes, and the over abundance of ostrich shots. And that if I were Barb I’d bitch slap Bill.
I also thought it was too simplistic now. And it’s like–Bill agreed to sacrifice himself and we’re supposed to think he’s wonderful now. This whole trip to Mexico seems to have been a half assed attempt to exonerate Bill in our eyes. The heavy-handed “No one gets left behind this time” when Frank was all, “Leave me behind.”
I did love Lois’s “OK!” reaction, though.
This is as opposed to western clerics… how exactly?
Sorry it took me a whole extra week to resurrect this thread and provide some exmo commentary. I wanted to talk about the theme and title of this episode, “Blood Atonement” and try to put that into context for some of you.
Yes, this was an over the top, jumping the shark kind of episode. But the theme deals with paying for one’s sins with blood. Now, all good Christians might come back to ask, “yes, but wasn’t that the purpose of Jesus’s crucifixtion, to atone for our sins?” (I can’t address that, because I can’t quite make sense of the Atonement myself, which is a completely separate issue.)
Back in the days of Brigham Young, BY truly believed that there are some sins that man cannot atone for all by his little lonesome.
All of the over-the-top nonsense in this episode goes back to people deciding that blood atonement must happen. Alby’s lover, Joey, Hollis Green…
Check out this article and then re-watch the episode with the concept of blood atonement in mind. Maybe Big Love isn’t quite so over the top as Brigham Young’s mormonism was?