As much as I would've enjoyed seeing twerpy little Marcel hazed down a notch, if Top Chef let that sort of behavior go unpunished, it and any other reality show in the same situation would be litigated into cancellation pretty quickly. Judging from Cliff's reaction to being asked to leave, maybe he thought it was a small price to pay for getting to give Marcel rug burns.

Heather, I'm surprised at how lightly you appear to be treating the incident between Marcel and Cliff. They aren't family, so you analogy with your brother holds no water. Imagine a colleague waking you up while you are sleeping and pinning you to the ground while someone else screams to have someone shave you? I don't care how big of an ass everyone perceives Marcel to be, he didn't deserve that. Cliff was rightly booted, but the rest of the yahoos who urged him on or sat giggling are just as guilty of exercising incredibly bad judgement. I wished they'd tossed the lot of them. The cast this season is full of petty, unprofessional, immature punks. Gimme Tiffani over this bunch, any day.

Okay, someone obviously taught Havrilesky in one of her writing classses (which aren't worth a damned thing in improving writing, Q.E.D.) to have a "unifying theme" in whatever she wrote. Thus her navel-staring essay on time, her bitch of a teacher and how traumatized she was. Well, that might work for a Steven Wright monologue (which can only be delivered when the person delivering it is smacked up on heroin, to produce Wright's slow, brain-damaged delivery). But it's egotistical and clunky as an essay.

Is it surprising that a techno-thriller like 24 is based on time and panic? On anal-retentiveness and viciousness? Especially when it's been often reported that this show is Dick Cheney's wet dream? (Or maybe his blueprint for the whole administration's behavior?)

What IS remarkable is that those first four episodes were available almost immediately on DVD at Best Buy. And that people were actually buying them. And that some people who were internet-savvy got them all before the first one aired. (Perhaps NBC "leaked" the episodes to build some word of mouth.)

The important question is, having provided such a slam-bang opening, how will they finish off the rest of the season? Will it all be Bauer and company running around the viaducts and abandoned warehouse districts of Los Angeles, barking into their cell phones, trying to keep up the sense of panic? It might be better to take a step back from the panic, and show what would happen to America sociologically. Showing America's latent racism boiling over, having street shootings of anyone looking even vaguely Middle Eastern, and having the voices of sanity and reason drowned out by screaming loons. (Very much like this letter column when anyone calls Saint Havrilesky on the carpet.)

This is a turning point for 24. Five seasons is a long time for such a program to last. It can't keep repeating the nail-biter format. It will have to evolve into something else, hopefully something with more meaning than Syd Field's ticking clock. That's the real issue over which nails should be bitten.

The Top Chef producers and editors apparently wanted to minimize the altercation with Marcel--as has been pointed out on a few websites discussing the show, if you look carefully at the footage of Marcel after he breaks free from Cliff, you see Elia on the ground laughing--with all her hair. So they went after Marcel FIRST, then crowded into a bathroom together giggling and shaving their own heads. (They also apparently omitted footage of Cliff further going into Marcel's bedroom and throwing chocolate bars at him until Marcel locked himself in the other bathroom.)

In any case, I think Havrilesky is truly downplaying the wrestling with Marcel here. Maybe she had her face ground into the carpet by older siblings--if so that's unfortunate, because I know my parents would never have let my siblings and I get to that level of physicality. But even so, juvenile horseplay with someone you know and love and is part of your family is very different than a gang of near-strangers who you've only met through the course of a competition, and who you already know despise you as a group. I wish all the other contestants had been kicked off, but I'll settle for Cliff's more than justified dismissal.

The bit on Top Chef shocked and disgusted me. Are you fucking kidding me? Do you even watch the show? Did you even notice that on a number of occasions Cliff said that he wanted to punch Marcel? Did you fail to see the gang mentality that the sick producers of this show gave free rein to throughout the competition?

And where did you get the idea that Marcel was a slimy little weasel, except from the bullies themselves? Great way to join in the groupthink.

I would also like to point out that the assaulters all went after Marcel BEFORE they decided to shave their own heads. If you look at the footage carefully, you will see that when Marcel finally pulls Cliff's fingers apart and gets away from him, he walks past Elia, who is on the right, as he leaves the room. She is actually doubled over with laughter. SOOOO funny for a huge man to push a little man's face into the carpet. This all has been brought out and is being discussed on the boards at Bravo (if they haven't deleted them yet for damage control) and at televisionwithoutpity.com. The producers deliberately changed the timeline on this because they didn't want us to see Elia, Sam, and Ilan, horrible human beings that they are, laughing their damn heads off AFTER the assault, in the most callous way. I don't believe they would have even shaved their heads, except that they were trying to minimize what they had done: "Look WE shaved our heads--no big deal!" And as Marcel has said in a recent interview, Cliff actually followed him into his bedroom and was throwing things at him, until Marcel finally locked himself in the bathroom to get away. Assault and harrassment like this should not be made light of.

I don't know about the frequency of black men being thrown off of reality TV shows, and you may have a point, but do you have to make it at the expense of reason and compassion? You might also, at least, look at the gender dynamics of this situation. It seems to me that Sam, Ilan, and Cliff represent the very macho culture of the kitchen, and have been trying to assert their privilege by demeaning a less "masculine" guy, with taunts about his sexuality and comments about the fact that he talks too much and so on.