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Alright so let's see, last we left this show, Renee went all crazy and Jack-like and cut off a dude's thumb to get his parole bracelet off. The dude's bleeding out - no crap - and so Jack helps out by getting some kind of acid to cauterize the wound. Jack has a lot of nerve calling Renee unstable - why, because she only cut off the dude's thumb and not his head? I'd also appreciate it if he'd stop saying she has a death wish. I'm pretty sure Jack's had a death wish during more than half of the seasons of this show. Learn empathy, man.

Renee cracks me up, mocking the thumbless guy and calling him a baby - and later a drama queen - for all the whining about pain. She gets Thumbless to take her to Vladimir but of course things don't go as planned and Renee is thrown in a car and driven away. And naturally the car is armored, and so the two-way doesn't work, and then there's a decoy car, and so Jack is following the wrong car. Vladimir kills Thumbless and Renee flat-out begs him to shoot her, which of course means he doesn't, and now he believes she has a nice weapons deal for him. She's in.

In less exciting news, Bad Russian Guy Sergei has two sons - one is David Anders and the less-famous one is dying because he transported the radioactive rods. Anders doesn't want his brother to die, and so he takes him to a doctor. There's your first Dumb Mistake By A Bad Guy That Will Lead To The Operation's Downfall.

President Hassan is hella pissed about his brother (and other members of his government) trying to overthrow him and he wants everyone dead. Meanwhile, his wife is playing the role of Elin Woods, all pissed because her husband loved that Blonde Journalist. And the U.S. President doesn't want him cracking down on his people and jeopardizing peace talks. Hassan's having an all-around bad day.

In least-exciting news, keep getting personal calls at work, Starbuck! You would think by now they'd have a ban on personal calls at CTU. And certainly a ban on leaving your freaking job during a terrorist crisis. Starbuck deserves waaaay better than this D-story. She heads home to find Rape Van Kevin (and, comically, some buddy of his on her couch) and we learn that they were in jail together - but it was a long time ago, when Starbuck was a minor. Kevin knows she works at CTU and wants her to cut him into some kind of money theft or something. CTU doesn't run Bank of America, Kev -- or does it?