Sometimes it just pays to ask.

I flew from Houston to Los Angeles Wednesday because I was lucky enough to snare a couple of seats to the American Idol elimination round at CBS Studios (courtesy of a client who was a former executive at Fox). My husband and I got there an hour before showtime and, after having to check my cellphone (none are allowed at the show), we made it inside. Even though the studio is small, holding around 300 people max, our seats were on the back row. So I politely asked the guard if I could find a better seat because I was a correspondent for CultureMap.

He moved me to the front row, a few seats down from Perez Hilton and next to guest singer Travis Garland's parents and a beautiful woman who called him a "good friend."

"We're Texan too," his mother told me. "We're from Lubbock."

"You need to listen to him," his friend told me. "He's going to be the next big thing."

Even though American Idol is live, its guest singers usually aren't. Garland performed his song twice before the show and the best one was presumably chosen for airing.

"This is TV, nothing is done just once," an announcer intoned before the second take."Cheer louder. Let's go!"

After Garland finished, the judges (minus Simon Cowell) came out with the 10 Idol finalists, who will go on tour after next week's season-ender, as a big cake was rolled onstage. They sang "Happy Birthday" to Fox reality chief, Mike Darnell. "He hired us all for the show," Randy Jackson said.

Ellen Degeneres — dubbed "Ellen The Generous" by Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes because she rarely said anything bad about a contestant the entire season — was in deep conversation with frontrunner Lee DeWyze while Randy Jackson huddled with chief rival Crystal Bowersox. But Cowell, who will leave the show after next week's finale, was nowhere to be found.

"I don't know where Simon is. He must be spray-painting his shirt on," Ryan Seacrest said in one of his few unscripted comments of the night. (During the show, Seacrest reads every line from a Teleprompter that is taller than he is.)

Even with all this activity, there was still 25 minutes before the show began, so the judges disappeared. As I waited, the audience rippled with whispers that the main attraction, teen idol Justin Bieber, would not be performing live. His performance was previously taped and he was nowhere in the house.

I asked Garland's friend, "Are you sure?"

"They always do it that way so they can edit it," she said.

I told her I was at an American Idol show three years ago and Barry Manilow performed live.

"That was then," she said.

With about five minutes until showtime, all 12 previously eliminated contestants reappeared, sending the surprised audience into a shouting frenzy, and the show began.

The most interesting parts were the commercial breaks. During one extended break, the judges hot footed it out of the auditorium through 20-foot-doors that led to a loading dock. When the doors were slid open to let them exit, sunlight flooded in (it was just a little after 6 p.m. West Coast time), adding a surreal feeling to the evening.

At another break, judges Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi hightailed it over to Hilton's seat to schmooze witth the celebrity gossip blogger. At another stop, the announcer announced that Bieber would not be performing live. "But you can watch his performance on the big screen," he said.

I was touched during one break, when Cowell and DioGuardi came over to a severely disabled boy in a wheelchair about two feet from me and tenderly spoke with him for several minutes and signed autographs. It made me think that Simon is not such a bad guy.

Finally it came time to announce the two finalists for next week's closer. When DeWyze's name was announced, the cheers were so earsplitting that I couldn't hear the other chosen contestant, Bowersox. The third contestant, Texan Casey James, sang his farewell song -—John Mayer's "Daughter" —and scooped up a little girl from the audience (maybe a niece? She didn't seem fazed). And then it was over.

But not quite.

"Don't leave everybody," the announcer said. It was time for the coin toss, with a special medallion bearing Bowersox's face on one side and DeWyze's on the other. Bowersox won the flip and chose to go second in next week's finale.

But I'm pretty sure that DeWyze will win. The audience was on his side and it's been a long time since a woman won American Idol.

Before we left to retrieve my cell phone —there must have been 60 or more waiting — the cities where the 2011 American Idol auditions were announced. Nashville, Jersey City, and San Francisco are on the list.

But it won't be the same without Simon.