6.6/1069 votes#1 - The Return
Season 3 Episode 1 - Aired 10/1/1983
Hooker, still haunted by the murder of his former partner five years previously, is determined to catch an unapprehendable band of bank robbers whose leader matches the description and tactics used by the his partner's killer...
Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Writer: Mark Rodgers
- 7.6/1095 votes
#2 - Carnal Express
Season 3 Episode 2 - Aired 10/8/1983
When a young female singer, whom Hooker has got cleaned up on a drug reform programme, is kidnapped, Stacy goes to work undercover as an exotic dancer at the club that they suspect to be a front for a white slavery ring that is dealing in attractive young women...
Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Writer: N/A
6.5/1068 votes#3 - Chinatown
Season 3 Episode 3 - Aired 10/15/1983
Responding to a shooting at a cock-fight in China Town, Hooker thinks he catches a glimpse of a face from the past in the crowd. As he investigates the illegal dealing of automatic weapons in the area, the face turns out to be the daughter of a woman who he was once in love with, but had to cut off their relationship after her husband, presumed dead, had turned up alive. But now, the man is involved with the gun dealing, and sees that he has an old score to settle with Hooker...
Director: Don Chaffey
Writer: Simon Muntner, Jack V. Fogarty
7.2/1081 votes#4 - The Cheerleader Murder
Season 3 Episode 4 - Aired 10/22/1983
Hooker and Romano, with Stacy and Corrigan, catch the thief of a freshly stolen car, but in the car's trunk, they find the body of a teenage girl. With the coroner's report revealing that the girl was a heavy cocaine user and had had a recent, crudely-operated abortion, they find themselves uncovering a racket that is getting young girls hooked on drugs and then leading them into making underage porn movies to pay for their addiction...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: Gerald Sanford
- 6.7/1068 votes
#5 - The Shadow of Truth
Season 3 Episode 5 - Aired 10/29/1983
Hooker is on a date with Lisa Jericho, an infamous ""muck-raking"" reporter, when the restaurant they're in comes under gun-fire. A man whom Lisa had previously done an article on is killed in the shooting, but Hooker begins to theorise that Lisa was in fact the intended target when later her life once again is endangered. Unbeknown to them, the crooked head of a construction company that the reporter is investigating, is determined to see that she isn't around to print an up-coming article revealing his corruption...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: N/A
- 6.1/1064 votes
#6 - Walk a Straight Line
Season 3 Episode 6 - Aired 11/5/1983
When an undercover armed robbery stake-out is bungled, leaving a cop wounded in hospital, Hooker becomes concerned that a veteran cop's heavy drinking was the cause of the stake-out's failure. As he hunts for the armed robbers who are targeting night-clubs, Hooker becomes more and more worried that his fellow officer is an alcoholic, and is not only endangering police operations, but himself and everyone around him...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: N/A
- 6.6/1073 votes
#7 - A Child is Missing
Season 3 Episode 7 - Aired 11/12/1983
A diamond thief and his partner trick a young boy and abduct him, in an act to spite and distress the boy's mother, who is the man's former wife. Hooker follows the trail to Mexico, where an eccentric local detective helps him to track down the thief and the missing boy...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: Jack B. Sowards
- 6.9/1068 votes
#8 - The Trial
Season 3 Episode 8 - Aired 11/19/1983
Responding to the alert of an armed super-market robbery, Romano and another Officer are wounded when one of the robbers opens fire at them. Romano blames a female Officer on the scene, who he believes to be guilty of cowardice in stopping the shooting, but with contradicting accounts of just what happened in the incident, Hooker angers Romano and several Officers when he announces he is to act as defence for the Officer in the upcoming trial. The move jeopardises both Hooker and Romano's partnership and their friendship, and the fact that the Officer had previously been brought up on a similar charge does not help her case; but was she actually the one to blame on this occasion?...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: N/A
- 7.3/1069 votes
#9 - Matter of Passion
Season 3 Episode 9 - Aired 11/26/1983
While out for a jog on the beach, Hooker finds the body of a dead young woman in the surf. When the coroner's report is unable to identify the girl, and indications are that she was murdered, Hooker becomes personally concerned in finding the person responsible. An attractive painter and a small book of phone numbers found with the girl are the only leads in the hunt for the killer, but as Hooker investigates the killing, attempts are made on his own life, as the murderer tries to keep him away from unravelling the events behind the girl's death...
Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Writer: Dick Nelson
- 7.2/1064 votes
#10 - Blue Murder
Season 3 Episode 10 - Aired 12/3/1983
When a pimp who has escaped charge on a technicality is shot dead, Hooker and Romano are on the alert for a vigilante group. But when a prostitute who witnessed the killing tells them that the killers were cops, it becomes apparent that two officers from an adjoining Police precinct are taking the law into their own hands...
Director: Don Chaffey
Writer: N/A
6.7/1064 votes#11 - Undercover Affair
Season 3 Episode 11 - Aired 12/10/1983
Hooker, Romano, Stacy and Corrigan are staking out a small-time drug dealer when they find that a major drug supplier is involved – who is being staked out in a Federal investigation. Hooker is ordered to keep well away from anything to do with the Fed operation and any of the smaller dealers which may be involved with the drug ring, something which proves to be difficult and results in Hooker being suspended. But an old flame, who is a Fed agent, is undercover posing as the girlfriend of head of the ring, and Hooker, fearing for her safety, is determined to put the ring out of operation himself - even if it costs him his job...
Director: Charlie Picerni
Writer: Simon Muntner
- 6.8/1068 votes
#12 - Slay Ride
Season 3 Episode 12 - Aired 12/17/1983
Despite being undercover dressed as Santa Claus, Hooker is finding it hard to get into the Yuletide cheer faced with his first Christmas away from Fran and the children; Stacy too, is low on Christmas spirit, after splitting up with her boyfriend. The Christmas blues set in even deeper when a drug stakeout doesn't go to plan, allowing the main target to get away. Later, after Stacy witnesses an armed hold-up by a man and woman connected with the wanted dealer, the woman is forced to abandon her young baby at a local church. As they try and get a lead on the offenders, Stacy looks after the young baby, but Hooker, Corrigan and Romano become concerned that she may be coming to attached to it too want to give it back...
Director: Bruce Kessler
Writer: Rick Husky
- 6.9/1080 votes
#13 - The Lipstick Killer
Season 3 Episode 13 - Aired 1/7/1984
Following the bludgeoning to death of a nurse, Hooker and co. investigate the case, the latest in a series of similar murders - a string of killings that Hooker investigated years before that has recently began again, in which the attacker sends a rose to the intended victim prior to the attack. With the aid of a disabled veteran detective and a top psychiatrist, Hooker and the team investigate and find evidence that the murderer, always dressed as an old-fashioned nurse, may actually be a man. But the pattern of the killings suggests that they have less than 48 hours to catch the killer before he / she strikes again...
Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Writer: Jack V. Fogarty, Robert C. Dennis, Ed Waters
- 6.6/1063 votes
#14 - The Snow Game
Season 3 Episode 14 - Aired 1/14/1984
Hooker, Romano, Stacy and Corrigan are involved in an undercover operation to nail a large cocaine dealing ring, when a highly respected fellow officer is killed, execution-style, by the ring, who are on to him. Tracking down one of the thugs involved, Romano is badly injured by a gun-shot wound, before Hooker captures the goon, who gives the lead of a crooked bail-bondsman who is involved with the dealing. Against the wishes of a DEA, Hooker and Corrigan go undercover as drug dealers, with Stacy posing as one of their carriers, to infiltrate the dangerous ring via the bail-bondsman and catch them in the act...
Director: William Shatner
Writer: Fred McKnight
- 7.3/1076 votes
#15 - Exercise in Murder
Season 3 Episode 15 - Aired 1/28/1984
In pursuit of a trio of diamond thieves, who escape via helicopter, Hooker is devastated when he accidentally shoots a 9-year-old boy, leaving the youngster critical in hospital. Meanwhile, Corrigan is concerned when his steady girlfriend Jill starts acting strangely before abruptly breaking off their relationship. The girl is actually being blackmailed by the trio of robbers; and when her body is found washed up from the ocean, Stacy goes undercover at the aerobics gym where Jill worked to try and get a lead, endangering herself in doing so...
Director: Phil Bondelli
Writer: N/A
- 7.1/1064 votes
#16 - Hooker's Run
Season 3 Episode 16 - Aired 2/4/1984
A planned bust on crime lord Frank Dio results in an informant of Corrigan's being shot dead, and Dio facing getting off charge after he manages to discard the gun, but held in custody for 72 hours, giving Hooker time to try and dig up enough evidence to put him behind bars. Following up the lead of Dio's former girlfriend, a prostitute, Hooker promises to put her in protective custody until the hearing and to be given a new identity after if she agrees to testify against Dio. The girl reluctantly agrees to testify, and while Stacy takes care of her young sister, Hooker must go all out to keep her alive, shielding her from the attempts on her life by Dio's men, but a security leak within the force makes keeping the girl's whereabouts a secret impossible...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: Simon Muntner
- 7.0/1058 votes
#17 - Hot Property
Season 3 Episode 17 - Aired 2/25/1984
After a drug bust that nails a drug-importing ring, that leaves a corrupt Officer involved with the ring dead, Hooker gives Stacy the honour of booking the seized heroin in at the precinct. Soon after, 'Mac' Mackenzie, an old fiancé suddenly re-appears on the scene and rekindles his relationship with her. But when the seized heroin is switched for sugar, meaning the Officers have nothing to hold the captured drug dealers on, Stacy is forced to hand in her badge and her gun until a hearing over the incident. Hooker begins to suspect that Mackenzie's re-appearance is rather too coincidental and that he is somehow involved with the drug ring; But with Stacy and Mac planning to get married, can he prove his fears in time?...
Director: Ric Rondell
Writer: Chester Krumholz
- 7.1/1068 votes
#18 - Death on the Line
Season 3 Episode 18 - Aired 3/3/1984
A worker from the Police precinct is attacked and raped, the latest in a series of rapes and robberies where none of the victims are able to identify their attacker. Investigating, Hooker and co. find that all the victims had prior been visited by a telephone repair man, information which enables them to track down the prime suspect, who ends up being killed as the result of pursuit. But Hooker fears that the dead man was actually the attacker's apprentice and not the actual attacker – a fear that is proven when the attacks continue...
Director: Cliff Bole
Writer: Jack V. Fogarty
- 6.6/1065 votes
#19 - Death Strip
Season 3 Episode 19 - Aired 3/10/1984
Romano is working undercover as a male stripper at a night-club where the owner is a suspect in a cocaine smuggling ring, when he witnesses his contact being shot dead. The dead girl had an incriminating photo of a key drug importer, but it is stolen by a small time criminal who wants to use it to blackmail his way into the drug operation. Before her death, the girl had sent the negative of the incriminating photo to her sister, a deaf mute; but she is attacked by the same man who stole the photograph from her sister, and has the negative snatched from her. Hooker and Romano investigate the tug-of-war over the incriminating negative as they try and identify the heads of the drug operation and put them out of business...
Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Writer: Patrick Mathews
- 6.5/1062 votes
#20 - Psychic Terror
Season 3 Episode 20 - Aired 3/24/1984
A renowned psychic is teamed up with Hooker to find the whereabouts of a kidnapped young girl, using visions of the girl's whereabouts that the woman keeps seeing; but even before the pair have met, the she keeps having a recurring dream about Hooker's death. Hooker has little belief in the woman's psychic abilities and how they can help locate the young girl, and is even more sceptical about her visions of his fate; but the more the pair work together, the more the woman's visions become realised - and the closer Hooker's predicted fate looms to come true...
Director: Kenneth R. Koch
Writer: William Kelley
- 6.7/1062 votes
#21 - Gang War
Season 3 Episode 21 - Aired 5/5/1984
Hooker and Romano are involved in a new neighborhood peace programme designed to reduce tension in an area where two Hispanic gangs are close to declaring all out-war on each other. But the whole programme and peace on the streets is jeopardised when the president of one of the gangs is gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Although the assailants are identified to be wearing the dress code of the victim's rival gang, Hooker suspects that someone else is fuelling the feud to benefit from the sale of fire-arms sold to both sides of the conflict, and must work fast to find the culprits before all-out war erupts between the two gangs...
Director: William Shatner
Writer: Sidney Ellis
- 7.4/1066 votes
#22 - Deadlock
Season 3 Episode 22 - Aired 5/12/1984
On night patrol, Hooker and Romano follow the trail of a pair of graffiti vandals to a department store, only to find the store guard dead and themselves unwittingly stumbling onto a gun robbery from the store's sports department. With their patrol car stolen by the graffiti vandals and the store's phones cut, the pair take on the thieves with no back-up, leading to a gun-fight with the trio of robbers which leaves Romano badly wounded by a gun-blast. Both sides trapped in the confines of the department store floor, the battle of wits climaxes with Hooker and the psychotic leader of the robbers trapped together in a store elevator, in a guns-drawn test of will...
Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr.
Writer: Bruce Shelly, David Ketchum
The Best Episodes of T. J. Hooker Season 3
Every episode of T. J. Hooker Season 3 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of T. J. Hooker Season 3!
Sergeant Thomas Jefferson Hooker is a tough-as-nails veteran police officer with the LCPD who turns his back on a gold badge and goes back to...
Genres:DramaCrime
Network:CBS
Season 3 Ratings Summary
"The Return" is the best rated episode of "T. J. Hooker" season 3. It scored 6.6/10 based on 69 votes. Directed by Sigmund Neufeld Jr. and written by Mark Rodgers, it aired on 10/1/1983. This episode is rated 1.0 points higher than the second-best, "Carnal Express".