With the impending season finale, I've been thinking about how much we've seen Carter grow in the past six years. How, at this point, Mark and Benton have watched him grow from that med student he was to the doctor he is now and everything in between. How those nurses have been working with him from the beginning, how Malik excitedly found out how rich the Carters were, how Mark reassured Carter when he was puking in the bathroom about his residency/drinking thing, how Kerry would wake him up in the morning. Carter is the only character who started with the show and has remained with the show as well.

At this point, only Mark, Peter and most of the nurses (and Kerry too) have always been with Carter and I think it would be awesome if they were the ones to reach out. I was glad it was Chen mentioning it, because she knew Carter way back then too, and maybe even she can see how much he's changed. But Carter is like the little boy of the ER. I watch the reruns, back before Carter decided to go into emergency medicine, before Gamma cut his trust fund, before he knew Lucy, when all he wanted was to be a good surgeon and please Benton. He's grown. And it's probably my absolute admiration for this character, but the whole staff has watched him grow too.

-- Joanne (bucklind@hotmail.com), May 14, 2000

Answers

Exactly Joanne! I said this before but he's the baby (not literally!) of the ER and everyone loves him and can't imagine that he's not okay right now. We saw him naive and starting out in season 1 (Mark, Susan, and Carol were mainly there to encourage him through the wrath of Benton), competitive in season 2 until he finally snapped out of it and became the "considerate" doctor. Season 3 he learned that he'd rather work and talk with people than cut them open, season 4 he dealt with a few things...Chase, a close relationship w/ Anna, and rising up and proving himself (Exodus), season 5 was kind of a low point; we really only saw the real Carter near the holidays, when he finally started relating with Lucy, and then near the end, and then this season we kind of got the old Carter back, just as anxious and ambitious as ever. And now he needs their help and they'd better give it to him. COME ON PEOPLE!

-- Elaine (mrsclooney78@hotmail.com), May 14, 2000.