Tony Almeida

Articleissues
cleanup = October 2008
expand = October 2008
plot = October 2008

Infobox character
series=24


caption= Carlos Bernard as Tony Almeida
name=Tony Almeida
portrayer=Carlos Bernard
lbl1=Appearances

data1=1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7

Anthony "Tony" Almeida is a fictional character played by Carlos Bernard on the television series "24", and one of the only people Jack Bauer still trusted until his apparent death in Season Five. [cite news|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/arts/television/15carr.html?_r=1&oref=slogin|title=Surviving So Jack Bauer Can Live Another Day|last=Carr|first=Coeli|date=January 15, 2006|publisher=The New York Times|accessdate=2008-07-07] Tony appeared to have died in Bauer's arms in the thirteenth episode of the fifth season, but will return in season 7. [cite news|url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09202007/tv/24_raises_dead.htm|title='24' RAISES DEAD|last=Kronfield|first=Melissa Jane|date=September 20, 2007|publisher=The New York Post|accessdate=2008-07-07]

Concept and Creation

Characterization

Tony Almeida was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1973cite book|last=Cerasini|first=Marc|title=24: The House Special Subcommittee's Findings at CTU|publisher=Harper Collins|date=2003|edition=First|pages=71|isbn=0-06-053550-4] He has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the San Diego State University and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. He served as a First Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.

Appearances

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In the first season, Almeida is third-in-command of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit. Tony is romantically involved with Nina Myers, who had previously been involved with Jack, hence the animosity between him and Jack.

Tony works there just after midnight when word comes in of a planned assassination of a presidential candidate, Senator David Palmer. When Jack becomes unreachable following a secret meeting with Richard Walsh, Tony becomes suspicious and eventually reports Jack's actions to Division. This leads to Division placing CTU in a lockdown status while George Mason interrogates key staff members. [cite episode|title = 3:00am-4:00am | series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 1 | number = 4|airdate=2001-11-27|credits = Writer: Robert Cochran Director: Winrich Kolbe] His suspicions are furthered when Jack returns and sneaks Nina out of the office at gunpoint. [cite episode|title = 6:00am-7:00am | series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 1 | number = 7|airdate=2002-01-08|credits = Writer: Andrea Newman Director: Bryan Spicer] Shortly thereafter, Tony catches Jamey Farrell in a lie when she tells Tony that Nina left for a meeting at Division. After Nina returns, the two interrogate her and she confesses to working for Gaines.cite episode|title = 8:00am-9:00am | series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 1 | number = 9|airdate=2002-01-22|credits = Writer: Virgil Williams Director: Stephen Hopkins] Jamey dies in an apparent suicide soon after this.

After Jack manages to save Teri and Kim, they return to CTU. While they are being debriefed, both Alberta Green and Ryan Chappelle encourage Tony to report that Jack unnecessarily endangered Senator Palmer to save his family, however he is unable to do so.cite episode|title = 1:00pm-2:00pm| series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 1 | number = 14|airdate=2002-03-05|credits = Writer: Joel Surnow Director: Jon Cassar]

Shortly, thereafter, the safe house where Teri and Kim are staying is attacked by hitmen working for Gaines' employers Andre and Alexis Drazen. The CTU agents guarding them are killed and Teri and Kim flee. After Nina asks Tony whether he is in fact doing everything he can to help Jack, he checks to the Bauer home and arrives in time to save Teri and Phil Parslow from being killed by Jovan Myovic.

Before the day's end Palmer is saved and the Drazens are killed, however Nina is revealed to be a "second" mole working directly for the Drazens. Jack determines this by viewing security tapes which clearly show that Nina killed Jamey. She is captured, though not before she kills several people while attempting to escape, including Teri Bauer. When Jack points the gun at Nina for her betrayal, Tony and George Mason dissuade Jack from pulling the trigger on her. Tony can only watch in disgust and disbelief as the woman he thought he loved is led away.

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After Nina's arrest and Jack leaving CTU following his wife's death, Tony becomes second in command at CTU under Mason by taking Nina's old position of Associate Special Agent in Charge or Chief of Staff. Tony is present when Jack is brought back in to assist when word comes in that Second Wave, a Middle Eastern terrorist organization, is planning to detonate a nuclear weapon within Los Angeles.

After Kate Warner becomes suspicious of her sister's fiancée, Reza Nayieer, she reports him to CTU. Tony then goes to the Warner home to question Reza and the Warner family. Though financial records link Reza to Syed Ali, the leader of Second Wave, he denies any involvement with terrorists. It is later learned that Reza is indeed innocent and that his fiancée Marie Warner was the one collaborating with terrorists.

Towards the beginning of the second season Mason was exposed to lethal dose of plutonium, leaving him with radiation sickness. In a noble effort to remove the nuclear bomb from a populated area, Mason crashed a plane carrying the bomb into the Nevada desert, sacrificing his own life in the ensuing nuclear blast. An hour earlier, Mason had passed the responsibility of Special Agent in Charge (or Director of CTU) on to Tony. Under his command, information arrived of recordings between Ali and representatives from three Middle Eastern countries at Cyprus.

After Jack learned from Jonathan Wallace that the Cyprus recordings were false, he was coerced into removing Kate from CTU. After Carrie Turner reported Jack's actions, Tony tried to stop him. Jack fought Tony off and escaped, injuring him and forcing him to walk on crutches for several hours afterwards. (In reality Carlos Bernard had been injured playing basketball and his injury had to be worked into the show).

After learning the truth, Tony, along with Michelle Dessler, began covertly assisting Jack despite orders from Chappelle, and eventually they were forced to physically incapacitate Chappelle. After Chappelle was found by Carrie, he ordered their arrest. The tide turned, however, when Mike Novick ordered Chappelle to assist Jack. Chappelle was forced to grant Tony and Michelle immunity and reinstate them. With their assistance, Jack and Sherry Palmer were able to get a recording implicating Peter Kingsley, the true manipulator of the days events, and prevent a war with the Middle East.

Throughout the day, he and Michelle shared a mutual attraction. At first, Tony kept his distance because he felt hesitant after what happened with Nina. After receiving parting advice from Mason, however, Michelle expressed an interest. The two would become romantically involved and later marry.

While Jack Bauer is often pre-occupied with other tasks such as leads to save his daughter or find more information about the terrorist threats, Tony has been out in the field as extensively as both Jack and Chase Edmunds. Throughout the day, Tony apprehended Joseph Sin-Chung, who was currently posing as a crew member of the apprehended cargo boat named Lee Jin-Yu. He prevented a terrorist threat at a metro station prior to the capture of CTU. During the hour that CTU was held hostage, Tony guides Kim Bauer to encrypt the hard-drive containing the data of the undercover CTU agents, significantly slowing down the terrorists' progress in getting the information.

Shortly after Kim's return to CTU, Tony leads one of the tactical teams disarming one of the bombs at a construction site situated along a fault line. Hours after the threat, Tony had to rush to the scene of a crime, which involved a hostage situation with Governor James Radford. After restraining as many confused gunmen as he could, he had to negotiate with the leader, who was merely a desperate man trying to save his sick son. Tony succeeds in calming down the gunman, but the gunman is found dead by the time Tony busts open the locked door. He started becoming suspicious of Radford as he checks the gunman's body. Tony's suspicions came true when an assistant of Governor Radford calls telling him to meet her at Fisher Pier, which was happening approximately at the same time as Chase Edmunds's return to C.T.U.

Tony met up with the assistant and was given a keycard to Radford's office, with the assistant suspecting that Radford was involved in terrorist activity. The suspicion came true as a helicopter ambushed the pair, killing the assistant. Tony barely escapes with his life and drives off to the Governor's office building. After dealing with various gunmen under Radford's payroll and rescuing any trapped civilians, Tony found evidence that showed Radford's involvement with the terrorists. It turned out that Radford was seen conversing with Peter Madsen, Joseph Sin-Chung, and an unknown third man. Tony attempts to track Radford and manages to eavesdrop on Radford's conversation with the unknown man. Radford attempted to walk out, but the assassin Mandy already kills Radford before Tony could do anything. Tony's evidence proved invaluable since CTU was later able to identify the third man as Max.

While Jack and Chase were busy at Fort Lesker, Tony, Michelle, and Chappelle have information that Kate Warner is still alive, but Chappelle restricted Tony from notifying Jack under the guise of completing the established mission. A few hours later, the trace was complete being located at Max's yacht. After berating Chappelle out of disgust, Tony heads back out to the field one more time to assist Jack and Chase at the L.A. Docks in a CTU helicopter. Tony picks up Chase first, and pilots the chopper to have Chase provide support fire for Jack before picking him up.

Tony maneuvers the helicopter around the yacht allowing Chase to mow down gunmen firing at them, while Jack abseils onto the deck of the yacht. As the day ends, Tony stays on the yacht with Kate to clean up the mess while Chase pilots the helicopter with a wounded Jack to a nearby hospital.

Tony still maintains his title as Special Agent-In-Charge and the Director of CTU, and is receiving promotion offers from other CTU divisions, particularly in Langley, Virginia. During the third season, he, Jack and Gael Ortega work on a sting operation to take the Cordilla virus off the "market". However when Jack tells him not to use Chase in any field operations this prompts Tony to go to the mall to pick up Kyle Singer resulting in getting shot in the neck. As Jack rushes to his side Singer and the hostile escape and CTU are unsure of who has been hit. Kim and Michelle hang in the balance, until it is confirmed that it was Tony that had been hit. He is comatose for only a few hours, before returning to his post at CTU against medical advice in order that he can engage with the sting operation against the Salazars.

As the day progresses tension mounts between Tony and Michelle, principally because Tony so effectively lied to his wife. But also the question is brought up over Tony's health and whether he should be running CTU due to some alleged mistakes which are then proved to be false allegations. At one point however Tony does collapse due to his injury, but after a while he seems to be fully recovered.

Tony faces further torment when Michelle is trapped inside the infected hotel. Ryan Chappelle, a figure who over the seasons Almeida has argued and put himself in direct conflict with, suggests that he acts as if Michelle is already dead and to make his work about avenging her death. Tony also provides suicide capsules to the civilians at the hotel. Tony along with Jack is the only person at CTU who has knowledge of Chapelle's sacrifice and makes the unfortunate announcement regarding his death to the rest of the staff later in the day.

Tony once again goes against Jack when he opts to use Kim in a field operation as a replacement for Jane Saunders, this results in the two heatedly arguing in the office. It would seem that the stress of this day takes its toll on him and towards the end he becomes more unpredictable and short tempered, notably when he utters a classic line "I'm having a real problem with your personality" to irritating analyst Chloe. Adding to this Almeida then chooses to breach protocol, help Steven Saunders escape to save Michelle's life and then break Saunder's daughter Jane out of CTU. He is stopped by Jack, in an interesting parallel scene to when Jack confronts Nina as she makes her escape in the first season. He and Jack then must stage a meeting with Saunders and during the confrontation Tony lies to Saunders and opens fire to save his wife killing several hostiles.

Tony is arrested for treason when it is found out he has been helping the terrorist Stephen Saunders who was holding his wife, Michelle Dessler, hostage. His likely sentence was said to be at least 20 years imprisonment or at most execution (The least possible without a partially suspended sentence or presidential commutation is five years in federal prison). Tony is held in one of the holding rooms but in the finale is released at request of Michelle so that he can run point from CTU on the operation to get the last virus deployment device. He is then taken away again, but not before sharing a passionate moment with Michelle knowing that he will be thinking of her that will keep him going in prison. Jack tries to reason with Hammond but unfortunately this gets no result.

Over the course of the show, arguably the most tension between Jack and Tony is in this season, when Tony said he would not sacrifice his wife for his job as Jack had. This scenario occurred when Jack ordered Michelle to be recaptured by the main antagonist Stephen Saunders in order to bring Saunders into custody.

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Almeida's wife, Michelle Dessler, left him after he was released from prison due to his drinking habits and bitterness and because he pushed her away. He moved in with a woman named Jen Slater, where he resided until about Day 4, when Jack required assistance at a security building. Tony saved Jack and Audrey Raines' life, and they lay low at his house for roughly half an hour. During the phone call in the security building, Jack told Audrey that he was calling "the only person he could trust". But Tony considers the rescue a repayment of the debt he owed Jack for getting him out of prison and initially does not wish to be involved in the case any further. Jack respected Tony's wishes not to be dragged further into the day's events, but when setting out to apprehend a suspect on his own, Tony reasoned that it would be stupid to let his friend go back out alone after just saving his life and offered his help.

As Tony and Jack went through the investigation, Jack saw his friend "come back to life," showing some of his old nobility, courage and resourcefulness as he became increasingly involved in the case by helping Jack rescue Behrooz from Navi Araz, and helped him apprehend Henry Powell before Marwan's sniper killed Powell. Eventually, Jack was able to convince Tony to return to CTU on a provisional basis, where he would work Tactical for Jack. Tensions rose when the Associate Special Agent in Charge of Division Bill Buchanan and Almeida's former wife, Michelle Dessler, took active command of CTU Los Angeles when incumbent Special Agent in Charge Erin Driscoll left for personal reasons.

Tony and Michelle clashed at first, but gradually, the two began to warm up to each other again, and near the end of the day, they had agreed to leave CTU together and start a new life. However, when Bill Buchanan called Tony into the field, Tony was captured by an assassin. The assassin, a woman named Mandy who had made an attempt on President David Palmer's life in season two, threatened to kill Tony if Michelle did not move LAPD units out of the area and clear an escape route. Michelle was going to comply but told Bill instead. When a car bomb went off with two people thought to be Tony and Mandy inside, Michelle was ordered to go home. However, due to the swift actions of Jack Bauer and his tactical teams, Tony was rescued and returned to Michelle.

At the end of Day 4, when Walt Cummings, an overzealous member of the new Logan Administration, decided that Jack Bauer needed to die due to his part in an illegal raid on the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, Tony played an intricate part in faking Jack's death. After smuggling him out of CTU, Tony allowed himself to have an emotional good-bye to his friend.cite episode|title = 6:00am-7:00am | series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 4 | number = 96|airdate=2005-05-23|credits = Writer: Robert Cochran and Howard Gordon Director: Jon Cassar]

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By Day 5, Tony and Michelle are no longer working for CTU and have rebuilt a happy life together. After receiving news that President David Palmer has been assassinated, Tony attempts to dissuade Michelle from going to CTU to assist in the investigation. He hesitates, but as he decides to follow Michelle outside, Michelle's car explodes. Rushing to get to her, he finds her unconscious, and presumably dead. As he holds her, the fuel tank in the car ignites causing a second explosion, critically injuring him. It is later revealed through CTU conversations that Michelle is, in fact, dead.cite episode|title = 7:00am-8:00am | series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 5 | number = 97|airdate=2006-01-15|credits = Writer: Howard Gordon Director: Jon Cassar]

Tony was transported to CTU Medical. Agent Curtis Manning requested he speak with Tony upon arrival, but pressure to Tony's brain left him unable to speak before going into surgery. At the White House, an assassin is sent into CTU by Walt Cummings to kill Jack Bauer, murdering and then posing as the doctor. Jack was informed that Tony had awoken and wanted to speak to him. With Tony unresponsive, Jack caught the oncoming attack in a reflection, and killed his would-be assassin.

Upon waking a few hours later, Tony is told by CTU Director Bill Buchanan that Michelle's condition is still unknown in order to keep him out of shock. However, Tony suspects otherwise and escapes CTU Medical to access a computer, where he learns of his wife's fate.

Tony was sealed inside CTU Medical, with , when the terrorists released the Sentox nerve gas in the building, killing approximately 40% of the staff. Enraged and feeling he has nothing left to live for, Tony decides to kill Henderson. At 7:59 on day 5, whilst Tony has second thoughts about killing Henderson for killing Michelle, Henderson awakes from his comatose state and stabs Tony with an overdose of hyoscine-pentothal in the chest. Henderson then grabs a handgun, then escapes the building. Jack rushes in and holds Tony in his arms. His last words before 8:00 were "She's gone, Jack."cite episode|title = 7:00pm-8:00pm | series = 24 | serieslink = 24 (TV series) | season = 5 | number = 109|airdate=2006-03-13|credits = Writer: Joel Surnow Director: Brad Turner]

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Carlos Bernard will return as Tony Almeida in the premiere of season 7 as one of the main antagonists. Show-runner Howard Gordon explained that Tony's "uncertain fate" left the door open for his return [cite web|title=24 Clocks Back In with a Shocking Return — TVGuide.com|url=http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-News-Blog/Todays-News/24-Clocks-Shocking/800022543|date=2007-09-19] and cited the lack of a "silent clock" as a deliberate move to keep his death ambiguous.cite web| title=Tony comes back to '24,' despite being dead|url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2007/09/tony-comes-back.html|date=2007-09-19|work=Los Angeles Times] "We didn't give him the [http://24.wikia.com/wiki/Silent_clock silent clock] because we always wanted to keep alive the possibility for some kind of (admittedly) miraculous resurrection... which we will explain," and followed up with "He's definitely "not" the Almeida we once knew."

Critical reception

References

External links

* [http://www.tvweek.com/podcasts/24/ Howard Gordon (Executive Producer) gives podcast interviews on each episode of 24]