When Chicago Med’s Crockett Marcel appears on screen, I’m always reminded of another of my favorite fictional Chicago doctors.
The news of Marcel leaving Med was heartbreaking, but I’ve been through this before, in 1996 when Mandy Patinkin’s Jeffrey Geiger left Chicago Hope.
The two characters have more in common than both working at a fictional Chicago hospital, including similar tragedies in their past that led to less than ideal behavior in their early episodes.
Mandy Patinkin’s Jeffrey Geiger is a more exaggerated version of Crockett Marcel
He did things Marcel never dreamed of doing, but for similar reasons
Jeffrey Geiger embodies excess in a way that Crockett Marcel does not.
He often loses his temper and does things that would be unimaginable in real life, such as using a golf club when another driver occupied his parking spot and made a snide comment about Geiger being late for a golf game. broke his headlight.
As a moody sixteen-year-old boy, it wasn’t his eccentric behavior that attracted me (although I loved that he bit another doctor’s finger and used it to diagnose him!).
This is the pain behind it.
Like Dr. Marcel of Chicago Medical Center, Geiger’s baby also died.
However, Marcel lost his daughter to leukemia and Geiger’s daughter was murdered by his wife.
Geiger’s wife suffered from schizophrenia, but the exact reason she killed her son was never explained, except that she drowned him in the bathtub.
Geiger’s life, like Marcel’s, is a touching mental health storyline.
Two of my favorite fictional Chicago doctors both threw themselves into their work, trying to escape the unspeakable pain of early loss.
We never got a chance to see Marcel deal with the mother of his child after losing her, which is a shame.
“Chicago Hope” offers some beautiful scenes with Geiger and his wife even though they are in a mental hospital, such as him singing to her while trying not to cry.
Two of my favorite fictional Chicago doctors were dedicated to their jobs
They are workaholics but truly want their patients’ lives to improve
Geiger and Marcel are both characters in desperate need of therapy, but they are also people who are committed to their jobs and do their jobs for the right reasons.
They are willing to go to extremes to safeguard patient care.
In an early episode, Guyger gets into trouble when he confronts the mother of a brain-dead baby who is unwilling to take her baby off life support or donate her heart to another baby in desperate need of one.
Marcel also fought hard for his patients, although he left this impulsive, patient-unsettling approach to Zola, a new intern who failed to persevere because she couldn’t learn to control herself.
Despite this, two of my favorite fictional Chicago doctors repeatedly pushed hard for experimental treatments or other care for patients who would otherwise die.
Marcel and Geiger both left traumatized
They need to unite for different reasons
While Marcel and Geiger were in their respective hospitals, they both struggled with psychological issues stemming from the loss of their children, such as fears of intimacy.
After the tragedy, they both broke up with the people they were trying to date for dramatic reasons.
Worst of all, two of my favorite fictional Chicago doctors ended up leaving Chicago due to further trauma.
Guyger’s exit was one of the most heartbreaking episodes in all of television.
He was frustrated that he was unable to save hospital lawyer Alan Birch (Peter MacNichol) after he was shot and killed during a robbery.
However, Burch left behind his newly adopted daughter, Alicia, who was an infant and slightly older than Geiger’s son was when he died, so Geiger adopted the child himself and took an indefinite leave of absence to spend time with her.
It’s only in retrospect that I realize that the story of my favorite fictional Chicago doctor has come full circle, when after grieving the death of his son, he was able to adopt another child and raise her.
This episode is powerful, raw, and sad. The same goes for Marcel’s swan song.
We don’t know yet if Marcel will get a wrap-up episode, we just know that Dominic Raines will be exiting as a regular on “Chicago Med.”
However, Marcel is devastated by two tragic and seemingly unnecessary deaths.
After being unable to help a child who needed a liver transplant but was infected, Marcel learned that the boy was dead…and so was his father, who committed suicide.
It brings back all the feelings Marcel had when his daughter died, and he can’t seem to move on any time soon.
This may be why he left Chicago Medical School.
I could talk about my two favorite fictional Chicago doctors forever, but I’ll leave it to you for now.
If you’ve watched “Chicago Hope” and “Chicago Med,” what similarities do you see between Geiger and Marcel? Do you like these characters?
Hit the comments and let us know!
