Once, when I was in high school, I was riding home on the 4 train and a pestilential odor wafted across the car. A homeless man stepped on board completely covered in what looked a whole lot like excrement. He began to sing for his supper. Skuzz me, la-eezen gennamin, he began, in a wheezing, addled English, and proceeded to sing the treacly R. Kelly ballad "I Believe I Can Fly." Walking from horrified passenger to horrified passenger, filthy hand outstretched -- spremma wingzin FLAH 'way... I beleeeee Ahkin flah...

I think about this man when I think of Top Chef's Betty Fraser. Immature, talentless and deluded. In a word: loathsome. She cheated, and very obviously so, on the calorie-counting episode: chefs were told clearly that they needed to replicate their dishes exactly on the day of service, and Betty substitutes sugar for Splenda. At least Otto, when he was discovered, had the class to own up to it and quit. Betty sobbed and blubbered that she was confused.

The rest of the competitors acquit themselves poorly in ganging up on Marcel, annoying as he must be. Yet Betty has stoked this herd instinct at every bovine turn, instigating and then blaming Marcel for his reaction. After he helped her at the Thanksgiving challenge, Betty not only had the gall to say Marcel was selfish, but then blamed him for her inability to brulee. This is a 44-year old woman who picks a fight with a 26-year old asshole, and then, tonight, whined that she didn't deserve to be eliminated before he did. Were I Marcel, I would shake her hand as she left the kitchen, all with a big Betty-eating smirk on my face. As she departed the show, Betty remarked to the camera, "I'm a winner! I -- am -- blessed." Spremma wingzin FLAH 'way...