Previously on 24, 9am - 10am

We're down to the last 5 hours. Sadly, I'm still not watching live...though this really is the end of an era, I don't think that live blogging will survive as an entertainment form for the nerdish egghead pop culture fans of bad TV. (And sometimes good TV.)

That said. Renee is dead. Jack moves quickly through his World Of Pain to revenge mode. (This will cost him, it never really works out this way.)

He manages to get into the courtroom where the evil Russian is being processed -- remember Bad Dad, who caused both of his sons to die, the guy with the Rods? yeah, I had forgotten him, too -- and gotten to the bottom of who killed Renee with about 30 seconds of verbal threats. (And geez, the courts work fast on TV; he was just arrested a few hours ago.)

It's the Russian government. And Bridezilla has all of the info.

The Evil Veep, the discredited former president, has gotten the Russians to agree to come back to the table and sign the peace accord, or he'll reveal their dastardly secret.

Jack heads back to interrogate Bridezilla, leading to the inevitably improbable promise of an immunity agreement, which the Evil Veep convinces Mme. President not to grant. In fact, he convinces her to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and get everyone to smile and make nice on the peace agreement.

Even though the Russians can't be trusted, and Mme. President Hassan will be royally annoyed if she ever learns that she's signing an agreement with the people who killed her husband.

She has shown her ability to be swayed by really bad advice from dubious actors in the past, so we're not really surprised. Mme. President, you're no David Palmer.

After a series of improbable conversations between our Mme. President and various mid-level government employees, where she implores them to understand her reasoning, she shuts Jack down and sends him off to be "debriefed" at an air force base in NJ.

Jack hi-jacks the helicopter (heh heh, hijack), and as things close down, Chloe -- still in charge of CTU -- is standing on the helipad ordering the Air Force to bring Jack down.

Bloop, bloop.