Peter Benton, M.D. is a fictional character from the NBC medical drama series ER, portrayed by actor Eriq La Salle, appearing as a primary character from the pilot episode until part way through the eighth season.
La Salle made two guest appearances in later episodes of the eighth season, before returning again for two more episodes in the fifteenth season, including the series finale.
Casting
Although Benton was an original character, according to an interview La Salle gave in 1997, he was cast late in the role, after the first season had already started filming. He recalled, "I was surprisingly calm. When casting waits that long, they're basically waiting for someone to come in and take the role. I was ready and completely focused. I came into the office with a stethoscope and surgical greens I had left over from [a previous role in] The Human Factor. When I left, I wanted them to say 'That's Dr. Benton'". Within three days of his audition, La Salle was offered the role of Dr. Benton.
Development
The name of the character was inspired by The Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now part of the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts) which was a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School, where series originator Michael Crichton studied medicine, although (perhaps coincidentally) the birth name of Crichton's wife at the time, Anne-Marie Martin, was also Benton.
Several relationships were scripted into the character's narrative. In Season 4 he began dating Dr. Elizabeth Corday, played by Alex Kingston. Both surgeons and the characters competed with each other professionally and failed to be adequately supportive of each other in their personal crises, so Corday ends the relationship in Season 5. According to an article published in Jet in 1999, Eriq La Salle was the reason why the romance dissolved. He was unhappy that Benton's interracial romance with Corday was being shown as less problematic than his prior romances with black characters, such as Jeanie Boulet (played by Gloria Reuben) and Carla Reese (played by Lisa Nicole Carson). In an interview, La Salle stated, "As an African-American man, it becomes a bit offensive if the negative things are all you're showing. Because in real life we romance and get on each other's nerves and laugh and do all the things that any other race of people do. So if the only time you show a balanced relationship is in an interracial relationship, whether it's conscious or sub-conscious, it sends a message I'm not comfortable with." Mindful of the image that he was portrayed on television, La Salle asked producers to end Benton's interracial romance. While being interviewed by Johnnie Cochran on Johnnie Cochran Tonight, La Salle commented, "We have to take care of the message that we're sending as African-Americans or any other group of minorities, that we have the exact same type of exchanges with our mates that we get to see our White counterparts have." In a subsequent episode, Benton was shown to be compassionate to his former girlfriend, Jeanie.
Cleo Finch
In Season 6, Benton began dating Dr. Cleo Finch, an ER pediatrician. Their relationship was stormy because of Peter's ex-girlfriend Carla, but in Season 8 they leave Chicago along with Benton's son Reese to start a new life. Peter Benton and Cleo Finch transferred to a different hospital. In the season 15 episode "Old Times," Benton is seen wearing a wedding ring, and it is assumed he and Cleo are now married.
John Carter
In the pilot episode, John Carter is introduced as a third-year medical student on his ER rotation. He is assigned to Benton, who proceeds to give Carter a hard time. They seldom get along and their personalities clash on many occasions. Benton is more ambitious and focused on surgery whereas Carter is more compassionate and willing to spend time with patients, a trait that "drove [Benton] crazy" as he put it to Cleo, although he considered Carter to be a talented and smart doctor. In Season 3, Benton develops appendicitis and Carter operates on him. However, Carter eventually decided to leave surgery for emergency medicine, a decision that caused him to clash with Benton. Nonetheless, the two have reconciled and, despite the fact that they have interacted less since Carter's transition to emergency medicine, formed a deep friendship.
In Season 6, Benton was visibly concerned about Carter after he was stabbed by a schizophrenic patient and eventually operates on him along with Dr. Anspaugh. During the surgery, Benton has become protective of Carter and expresses reluctance to leave his former protégé for another patient. Soon after, upon hearing Carter becoming addicted to painkillers, he refuses to watch Carter self-destruct and convinces Carter to enter rehab.
In Season 8, before Dr. Benton departs County General, his final farewell is to Carter. As a going-away present, Carter hands Benton a train token; it is the same one Benton had given him shortly after he started in the ER. Carter was left exhausted and distraught after a shift where the ER had handled a mass casualty, and when he admitted the night had devastated him and Benton simply gave him the token and said that if he was serious about being a good doctor, he would use it to come back to work the next day. Carter did return for his scheduled shift but kept that token as a reminder of what the job entailed.
In Season 15, he reunited with Carter when he was in need of a kidney transplant. Benton supervises the operation at the hospital where he works and makes sure that his old friend and colleague get the best medical support. As Benton knew that Carter has gone to Africa for the past 4 years, it is likely that both doctors kept in limited contact with each other while working at different hospitals.
Career
Dr. Romano eventually offers Benton an attending trauma surgeon position, but when a Medicare patient needs surgery that Romano refuses to allow to be performed, Benton calls social services and informs them of the refusal of care. Romano intercepts the patient as social services arrive and performs the surgery, but he is enraged at Peter for calling them. Romano then retracts the idea of an attending trauma surgeon, explaining to Peter that the fines social services and Medicare inflicted on the hospital roughly equal what Peter's yearly salary would have been. Romano then offers Benton a per diem surgical position with reduced benefits and more difficult scheduling, but Benton refuses. Romano also uses his considerable influence to blacklist Benton throughout the medical community, making it impossible for Benton to find a job in Chicago. Corday finds a new job for him in Philadelphia, but Carla will not continue joint custody of Reese if Peter leaves town (citing Peter's resistance to her and her husband Roger's plans to move the year before). Peter is then forced to go to Romano and accept the per diem position.
After the court battle between Roger and himself, Benton is forced to move away from County to work better hours in another hospital, in order to gain custody of Reese. In his last surgery at County, Benton miraculously saves a six-year-old victim of a shooting accident.
After County General
After leaving the series, Benton was seen a few more times. The first time was when he was passing the torch to Dr. Corday and she told him that her marriage to Benton's friend and colleague Dr. Mark Greene was in trouble. His next appearance was at the funeral of Greene. Benton appears in a photo as part of a slideshow at Dr. Carter's farewell party, and Benton is heard in a voiceover memory as Carter leaves the ER for the last time in the 11th-season finale. Eriq La Salle made an uncredited appearance in the opening of "Heal Thyself" to tell the audience of the death of the show's creator Michael Crichton.
Season 15
During the 15th and final season of ER, at the end of the episode "The Book of Abby", long-serving nurse Haleh Adams shows the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees have put their locker name tags. Among them, the tag "Benton" can be seen.
Benton returns in the 19th episode of the 15th (final) season of ER in the episode "Old Times" which first was broadcast on 12 March 2009. In the episode, he visits an old friend and former student John Carter who is awaiting a kidney transplant, and it is revealed that Benton has left private practice for a surgical attending position at Northwestern University Hospital now that Reese is thirteen. He is seen wearing a wedding ring, so it is assumed he has married Cleo Finch who Benton states is at home watching Reese. Benton decides to observe Carter's transplant and Benton's insistence on being thorough, which annoys the surgeon, allows a complication to be resolved and the surgery to be a success.
In the series finale, Benton goes to Carter's opening of his new hospital with Reese. He also goes to the afterparty with Carter, Susan Lewis, and Kerry Weaver and meets Elizabeth Corday and Rachel Greene.
Reception
Dr. Peter Benton was named the #10 Top TV Dad by SocialTechPop in 2011. Entertainment Weekly included him in their list of the "21 Most Annoying TV Characters Ever".