"You deserve better," he said.

"Mitt Romney — his experience, his ideas, his solutions — is uniquely qualified to get this job done. At a time when we have a jobs crisis in America, wouldn’t it be nice to have a job-creator in the White House?" Ryan said. "The choice is clear, and the choice rests with you."

In Biden's closing statement, he testily noted that Ryan got 40 seconds, and he'd only get 15. It was a very specific number, which shows Biden's debate experience.

Biden, perhaps anticipating criticisms of his face's performance tonight, said, "you probably detected my frustration with their attitude about the American people."

He gets quieter and more serious: "All they’re looking for, Martha, all they’re looking for is an even shot. Whenever you give them the shot, they’ve done it. They’ve done it...."

"And the president and I are not going to rest until that playing field is leveled, they, in fact, have a clear shot, and they have peace of mind, until they can turn to their kid and say with a degree of confidence, 'Honey, it’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK.'"

10:50p.m.: During the debate over Afghanistan, Biden didn't look like an uncle shaking his head at a silly nephew. He looked mad. Here's Ryan nodding his head after Biden said the military favored the Afghan pullout timeline, and Raddatz cut in, "The military follows orders. I mean, there — trust me. There are people who were concerned about pulling out on the fighting season."

Then Ryan explained the fighting season. He dropped the names of military figures and several hot spots in Afghanistan, and his debate prep showed. But then he tried to explain the Afghan fighting season in plain language:

Here’s the way it works. The mountain passes fill in with snow. The Taliban and the terrorists and the Haqqani and the Quetta Shura come over from Pakistan to fight our men and women. When it fills in with snow, they can’t do it. That’s what we call fighting seasons. In the warm months, fighting gets really high. In the winter, it goes down.

Ryan said we'll have the same mission, but 20,000 fewer troops. Biden didn't like it, saying,

Because we turned it over... we turned it over to the Afghan troops we trained. No one got pulled out that didn’t get filled in by trained Afghan personnel. And he’s — he’s conflating two issues. The fighting season that Petraeus was talking about and former — and Admiral Mullen was the fighting season this spring. That’s what he was talking about. We did not — we did not pull them out.

"The calendar works the same every year," Ryan responded.

The Wall Street Journal's Julian Barnes tweeted, "Biden made clearest statement yet that there won't be a residual force in Afghanistan after 2014. Many in military want CT trainers to stay."

10:43p.m.: In this Associated Press photo, you can see Biden's notes. No.1? "No Apology." Some lines are hard to read, but one says "EFFECTIVE."