Chicago Med season 6 character preview: Crockett Marcel

What should happen

What Crockett Marcel needs, first and foremost and desperately, is character development for himself as an individual—something that has nothing to do with any other character or any of the various relationships on the show either.

Almost everything he’s done has been connected to somebody else. Having him directly replace Connor cast an immediate shadow over him, given how beloved both Connor Rhodes and Colin Donnell were (and still are). That comparison only got worse when it became clear that Connor was a far more professional doctor than Crockett has so far been shown as. If the two had ever worked together, Connor probably wouldn’t have been able to stand this guy.

Then the show threw him into being the third wheel in April and Ethan’s relationship, before it started to tee up something going on between him and Natalie. New characters on any TV show don’t need to be rushed into a romantic subplot when we, and the other people around them, are just getting to know them. Look at Dr. Ava Bekker (Norma Kuhling); she was flirting with Connor from her first appearance, we never got to know that much about her either, and then she was gone.

None of this is Dominic Rains’ fault; he’s done a swell job with the material that he’s been given, and in the rare instances where we’ve gotten to see Crockett’s vulnerability, he’s shown that he has a lot of talent. But he’s held back by the underdevelopment of his character. Season 6 ought to be the season where audiences get some real insight into Crockett—and not just another backstory episode, but some real medical and perhaps even emotional challenges that show who he is rather than tell us.