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.
Jack spends most of his radio show talking with a homicidal/suicidal 'spurned lover' - the man is waiting to kill his girlfriend and then himself. It's a race against time for the police to track down the location of the woman's home.
Jack's old girlfriend, Tina, arrives in town. She informs him she has contracted AIDS and will die. Unable to handle the hopelessness of the situation, Jack sets out to find the man responsible. Jack is shocked to see that the message of safe sex is still being ignored, despite the obvious consequences. He uses his show as a forum on AIDS awareness as well as a means of tracking down the man who infected Tina.
A female friend of Jack's from the police force is wounded in the line of duty and her partner killed. They seek comfort in each other's arms to grieve the deaths of their partners. Jack finds himself in the crossfire of the mob hit man trying to silence the only witness to the crime.
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.
Jack, Devon and Billy are forced to examine their belief in capital punishment when they are invited to broadcast the final hours of a death row inmate's life.
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.
Jack finds himself being raked over the coals by a jealous competitor who has insider information on an Internal Affairs investigation, which found Jack not guilty of the charges.
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 and Devon are both struggling to come to terms with their fathers. Jack's father returns after an absence of 25 years; Devon's father suffers a heart attack and the two must mend their fences in the face of the illness.
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.
On the fortieth anniversary of one of San Francisco's most celebrated unsolved murders, Jack is drawn into a case that hits closer to home than anyone could imagine.
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.
Jack continues to be haunted by the night of Rusty's death. This time he has to help out Rusty's son, Ethan, who has run away from home and calls Jack to tell him so.
Assisting an injured woman 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.
One of Jack's regular callers 'witnesses' a murder in her apartment building while talking to Jack on the phone. She isn't believed by the authorities because she is blind and there is no evidence that a crime has been committed.
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.
Jack's mentor on the police force is reunited with him under horrific circumstances. His policeman son-in-law commits suicide after calling Jack's show. Jack finds himself involved in a convoluted plot of understanding why, which has him questioning the ethics of some fellow officers.
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.
When Devon becomes a kidnap victim of the call-in killer, Zymak and Jack work together to discover that the crimes are a twisted vendetta against Jack and KJCM.
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.
Devon is stalked by a man who targets her during a traffic jam. She and Jack are forced into a situation that causes them to contemplate moving their relationship from platonic to something more.
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.
Jack receives a call from a hospice. Tina Cassidy's battle with AIDS is near the end. As Jack goes to her, he reflects on their time together.
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.
Deacon's girlfriend, Susan, seeks Jack's assistance in dealing with her gambling debts. As Jack investigates outside of the official channels, he uncovers an art forgery ring that has Susan in the middle of it.
A blessed statue of the baby Jesus is stolen from St. Michael's Cathedral. Jack uses his show to find out clues to its whereabouts and to prevent the mob family who donated the statue from exacting their own form of penance on the perpetrator.
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 abandoned young boy seeks refuge within a modern day band of street thieves with similarities to the Charles Dickens classic, Oliver Twist.
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...
Jack borrows Devon's car, unfortunately a young woman is killed by a hit and run driver matching Devon's car and Jack's description. The victim turns out to be the daughter of an influential retired lawyer, who wants retribution. Jack is hauled in for questioning, and becomes the pawn in a jewelry thief's deal for release.
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.
Gang violence and police retaliation are the focal point for this episode. Zymak, accused of police brutality, is unable to come clean with his whereabouts as his marriage is disintegrating.
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.
We don't see much of Jack in the episode, as his brother and his father hook up for the first time in years to help a damsel in distress retrieve a valuable artifact. (This was the premise for a spinoff show that didn't make it off the ground.)
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.
Jack's friend from childhood is too close to the hostage situations around the world; his brother is one of many on a hijacked plane. In retaliation, he kidnaps an official from the country claiming responsibility. He keeps regular contact with Jack via the radio show, alluding to his location.
Jack is haunted by the memory of Tina as her birthday approaches. His friends try to offer their help and comfort, but Jack seems to have lost his way, especially the reasons he helps others.
A very pregnant Devon hosts a fundraiser with Jack as the object of the bachelor auction. Her college classmates attend; however, one by one, they fall victim to a murderer. Jack, Zymak and Deacon all work the angles of this case, with the evidence pointing firmly at Jack's new girlfriend.
Our man Billy Po is featured in this episode of racial tensions that are spawned in Little Italy. Billy is attacked after a date with his girlfriend, which leads Jack into an investigation of the death of a young Chinese immigrant.
The sudden death of Jack's surrogate father leads Jack and Deacon to investigate the policies of the nursing home in which he was residing. It turns out that once people move in, their stay is usually quite short.
Jack is offered a new job, which he considers as Devon prepares to sell KJCM and move to Tahiti with the father of her child. We are introduced to Nikki Malloy in this episode and the prospective new owners of KJCM. Jack and Devon deal with their imminent separation by arguing with each other every chance they can get.
Devon struggles with the sale of KJCM, wanting to ensure that her employees are well taken care of. She and Jack continue to lock horns, until push comes to shove in the delivery room! Jack has to decide whether to stay on at KJCM or move on to greener pastures.
Nikki shows who's the new boss by insisting Jack cover a prison riot near San Francisco. Jack arrives at the prison and becomes part of a chosen delegation to go inside and witness the atrocities the convicts are rebelling against. Unknowingly, Jack becomes the target of one of the inmates, who has a personal score to settle.
The convicts demand Jack broadcast their side of the story via KJCM, Deacon gets an interview with the prisoner on the outside, and Jack meets up with the prisoner with a bone to pick.
Jack tries to help out his radio hero from his youth by trying to convince Nikki to give him a job. Jack seems blind to the man's obvious faults and self-destructive actions.
A child of the Vietnam war, whose father was a U.S. serviceman, instigates a hostage situation into which Jack is drawn.
Jack tells Nikki about a situation he and Devon were trapped in a year ago, in which a vengeful ex-con and his gang kidnapped Devon in order to lure Jack to a payback situation.
Jack's associate in the underworld seeks his assistance in locating his restaurant's kidnapped chef. The story turns out to be of a personal nature between the kidnapper and his hostage.
Jack recognizes a woman who has been missing for years and in his pursuit of her he uncovers that she intentionally disappeared to avoid beatings from cop husband.
When Zymak's relationship with an immigration officer seems to be clouding his judgment in a murder investigation, Jack becomes involved at the request of one of the deceased person's relatives.
A former snitch seeks Jack's help in collecting his lotto winnings. He's in the witness protection program, and he's not a very popular citizen in San Francisco! When Jack isn't successful, the would-be millionaire approaches various familiar faces to attempt to retrieve the prize.
Jack and Nikki's tenuous friendship is tested when he questions her involvement with an ex-boyfriend, who has a substance abuse problem.
Jack struggles with his opinion of deadbeat dads and with giving his ""Little Brother"" a positive start with his father who is making an effort to reform himself.
A frequent caller to the show witnesses a murder; however no one believes her because the crime scene is cleaned up before the cops get there. She turns to Jack for help, protection, and comfort.
Jack's troubled young sister shows up on his doorstep. She and Deacon become emotionally involved and Jack struggles with the relationship.
KJCM's security guard is charged with murdering his son. Jack gets involved because the guard is suing KJCM for the advice he claims he received from Jack in how to deal with the drug problem in his family.
Jack and Nikki find themselves as proxies in a poker game; Jack's father's life is at stake.
The Castlemans are pressuring KJCM to take a stand in the upcoming election, Jack is greeted by his supposed daughter, and his high school friend is murdered.
Jack pursues the death of his friend, who had been homeless for many years. In his search for answers to Sonny's death he goes undercover on the streets and meets up with the hierarchy of the street dwellers. Jack's pursuits may cost him his job, as a young upstart in the Castleman dynasty covers his show without a problem.
Closing in on the answers to Sonny's death leads to connections to the candidates and the issue of the homeless, which in turn causes Jack to become the target of an assassin.