A Tribute To ‘ER’ Doctors Benton And Carter, A Pair For The Ages

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https://uproxx.com/sepinwall/er-pete...arter-tribute/

But the greatest joy I’ve taken from revisiting the show has come from the two characters who were my favorites back in the day, particularly as they related to one another: Eriq La Salle as Peter Benton, and Noah Wyle as John Carter.

Of all the original characters, Carter’s evolution was the easiest to chart. He was our point of view character, the guy who learned how the hospital worked at the same rate we did. He started off as a fresh-faced kid, not even a doctor until the third season (and not working full-time in the emergency room until the fourth), growing up (and occasionally growing divisive facial hair) until he had become the most mature and sensible voice in that whole place. It’s the sort of professional coming-of-age story serialized television is so well-equipped to portray, done at a very high level.

Benton’s evolution was subtler, and in hindsight, more revolutionary. He starts off seeming like the prototypical arrogant young surgeon, and has the famous pilot episode’s most memorable and heroic moment: performing a solo surgery to repair a ruptured aneurysm when no veteran doctors are available, then celebrating with what would become a staple of the opening credits for the next eight seasons:


As a twentysomething eager to prove myself back then, Benton’s cockiness spoke to me, and made me root for him even when he could be a stubborn, overbearing jerk to Carter or anyone else. But he turns out — particularly on second viewing — to be so much more than the cliche. Benton has impossibly high standards he holds himself to, as well as the people he respects — which will in time, to the surprise of both men, include John Truman Carter. He is fanatical about diet, exercise, and improving his skills as a surgeon. He also becomes in time much better with bedside manner than you might remember: soft-spoken and empathetic with patients and their loved ones, and even pretty good after a while with the other doctors and nurses. He’s acutely aware of being a black man in a field that doesn’t have a lot of them, working in an urban trauma center where many of the patients look like him, but he’s far from solely defined by his skin color, and would be offended by the suggestion(*). He believes himself capable of becoming the best surgeon anyone has ever seen, and often enough — especially when it involved what would come to be his unofficial specialty: marathon surgeries for trauma victims other doctors dismiss as lost causes — he demonstrates the kind of skills that back up that attitude.