The Knives are Drawn: Marcel from "Top Chef" Attacked

While I'm pleased as punch about the Oscar nominations revealed earlier today, I couldn't let the morning go by without sharing a piece of news from yesterday that I found completely shocking.

I'm talking of course about Top Chef's Marcel.

For those of you who don't watch Top Chef (and really you should be watching), Marcel Vigneron has become quite the littlest villain Bravo's culinary competition has ever known. (Yes, he tops even last season's flame-haired Svengali Tiffani.) With the exception of Elia, every remaining competitor (and a few eliminated players) seem to loathe his very existence.

Apparently, so do the viewers at home.

According to the Las Vegas Weekly (found via Reality Blurred), Marcel was recently attacked by an unknown woman at a nightclub:

"The girl came up to me at a nightclub and asked me if I was Marcel from Top Chef. The next thing I knew, this bottle struck me, and my friends had to rush me to the hospital. I needed 30 stitches for this."

(And, no, before you ask, it wasn't fellow contestant Ilan Hall's girlfriend.)

As a result of the brutal face-meets-glass-bottle smashing, the pocket-sized chef now has a one-inch scar that has all but shattered his dreams of being a Food & Wine cover boy.

In all seriousness though, I can't imagine that even Marcel would engender that much vitriol from the viewing public. After all, he's just a reality TV contestant and not Idi Amin or anything. That someone, a stranger even, would go to the lengths to savagely assault him is just terrifying. Not for anything that he did or believed or because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because he's on a reality TV show.

Wow.

While I must admit that I had more sympathy for Marcel after Cliff's full-nelson head-lock from last week's episode, it hasn't made me like him any more than I did. And while I am sure that much of the perceived negativity towards Marcel is a result of editing, there must be a reason that the other contestants just hate him with such a fiery passion.

Still, Marcel claims that he wasn't scared of Cliff and the others. "I don't believe violence solves anything," he told Las Vegas Weekly, "but when I broke free from them, I saw this lamp and I just wanted to smash it over one of their heads. That freaked me out. At that moment, that had me playing their game. And it kills me that these are the guys that question my maturity. I mean, pinning me down to shave me head, that's what drunken frat boys do, not a top chef."

Scarily, I have to agree with Marcel. That's the first time I'd even imagine myself saying something like that.

Part One of Top Chef's second season finale airs tomorrow night on Bravo at 10 pm ET/PT.