Midnight Caller

As the second season ends, Killian's behavior is definitely out of the ordinary... he can't seem to care about anything. A heart-to-heart intervention with Deacon and Zymak reveals that Jack is mourning Tina as her birthday approaches, but Devon needs him back to normal, for other reasons.

One of Jack's informants from his police force days seeks his assistance when his witness protection status is jeopardized. Jack is drawn into a government conspiracy that reaches to high office and global proportion.

A long time prisoner of the correctional system is paroled, and he finds the real world too difficult to manage. Jack tries to dissuade him from breaking his parole just to get back into the system he knows so well.

Things are looking tense for Jack, when he and Deacon sit down to figure out the tangled web of lies and deceit to which he has fallen victim.

The exploitation of illegal immigrants in the work force and the sporting world is the premise for this episode. Jack introduces Devon to the world of boxing. Unfortunately, this leads to the more unpleasant side of things...

The devastating San Francisco earthquake is re-enacted as Jack and Billy help citizens connect with loved ones via the radio waves, Devon has a close encounter, and Zymak and his family re-unite under tense circumstances.

An abused wife calls Jack's show fearing for her life. Their paths cross and they become romantically involved. The reappearance of the abusive husband throws Jack into the middle of a murder investigation - as the prime suspect.

A woman chooses imprisonment versus revealing the location of her daughter to her ex-husband. The young child is supposedly a victim of sexual abuse while her legal eagle parents sort through their own personality flaws. Jack becomes a link in the chain of lies and law-bending for the sake of the child.

The drug trade hits too close to home for a San Francisco neighborhood. Their personal war on crime becomes the focus of Jack's show.

In an effort to help his friend whose son is being kept alive by life support, Jack showcases the issue of euthanasia on his show.

Jack's show is plagued by a series of on-air murders and locations of dead bodies. Jack's intuition tells him it's a serial killer but he has a hard time convincing Lieutenant Zymak.

The season finale deals with the issue of gun control, and a citizen's right to bear arms. A neighborhood convenience store owner misinterprets Jack's caution to protect himself, ends up killing a man and places partial blame on Jack for the idea.

Assisting an ill man on the street, a young doctor is faced with every mother's nightmare when her infant daughter is abducted by a young woman whose grasp on reality is failing. Jack uses the show as a forum to track down the kidnapped child, who, on top of everything, is desperately ill and will die without her medication.

Jack is drawn back to the neighborhood he worked in as a patrolman in response to a mother's plea to help her drug-addicted son.

Jack meets a night club singer, dates her and falls hard for her. She warns him of her ex-husband who's not willing to let her go. The man even attacks Jack with a knife in a bar. Later the man is killed and Jack is the prime suspect.

A young runaway, forced into prostitution, turns to Jack via his radio show for assistance in breaking away from her pimp who is involved in the white slavery market.

Jack receives a phone call from a kidnapper who informs Jack that he has taken a suspected murderer into his personal custody so he won't hurt any more women. He continues to use Jack's show as a forum for his demands. A supposed suicide is revealed to be an elaborate murder cover up.

As Jack's luck would have it, he goes into a bank to cash a cheque and finds himself a hostage in a bank robbery. The media and the police wait out the negotiations, all with a personal interest in Jack's well-being.

"After It Happened" is a 1988 episode of the NBC television series Midnight Caller. The controversial episode tells the story of a bisexual man who is deliberately infecting people, including series lead character Jack Killian's ex-girlfriend, with HIV. AIDS and LGBT rights activists disrupted filming, citing concerns over the negative portrayal of bisexual and HIV-positive people and fears that the show would make people with AIDS the targets of violence. Series executives made some changes to the script in response to these concerns, but activists were still displeased. "After It Happened" performed well in the ratings but received a mixed critical response. Actress Kay Lenz received an Emmy Award for her guest-starring role as Killian's ex-girlfriend Tina. NBC aired a follow-up episode in 1989 in which Tina is near death. This second script, "Someone to Love", was written in consultation with some of the groups that protested "After It Happened" and was much more favorably received.

Jack Killian retires from the San Francisco Police Department after accidentally shooting his partner, Rusty, in a crossfire situation. He's drawn back to the world of the living by an offer to be a late night talk radio host. A serial killer begins calling Jack, explaining the assassinations and Jack's inadvertently pulled back into the crime fighting world.