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Maybe a lot of footage has been left on the cutting room floor, but all the animosity toward Marcel on "Top Chef" is strange to many of the people I've talked to who watch the show. We keep (constantly) being told how arrogant and nasty Marcel is, but the footage that's been left in the show rarely shows Marcel as a contestant who's any more annoying or full of himself than any of the rest of the bunch. Really, what we've seen has often made the other contestants look more like a gang of belligerent bullies (for example, the other contestants seemed really fond of Betty, who came across to home viewers as mean and incredibly shrill). What gives? It seems like a deliberate construction on "Top Chef" to cast Marcel as this season's "villain" (just like "Project Runway" is doing with a "villain" every season, and the way they suddenly cast the lesbian as a "villain" at the end of last season on "Top Chef") and I start to wonder whether it was the producers and not just the other contestants who set up this atmosphere in the first place.
Frequently, we've seen Marcel offer to help other contestants, and there was really only one elimination where he actually seemed noticeably more pompous than the other contestants, all of whom are egoists. As another poster pointed out, Cliff talked about punching Marcel out and several of the other male contestants threatened Marcel with violence on earlier shows. Is there something missing, or is there some reason why it devolved to that level? Even if Marcel was annoying, we sure never saw him threatening to hurt someone, so why was this acceptable behavior from the other contestants? (It's hard to imagine "Top Chef's" sister-show "Project Runway" letting threats of physical violence to another contestant go without Tim Gunn stepping in and telling them to cool it). Why did the producers of "Top Chef" let what was obviously a threatening atmosphere get to that point (and then punish a contestant who followed through on what had been building)? "Project Runway" and "Top Chef" are supposed to be a little more high-scale and based on talent than shows like, say, Fox's "Hell's Kitchen." The producers of "Top Chef" weren't very responsible here, and they ended up with a situation that was bad for Marcel, Cliff, and, really, the audience.
