Saul is contacted by an old friend

Saul is contacted by an old friend (and one-time romantic interest) via Facebook. When Kevin and Scotty casually point out from the friend's profile that he's been living with AIDS for many years, it leads Saul to admit that he's never actually been tested for the virus that causes AIDS.

Saul admits that, decades earlier, he had had a series of random, unprotected sexual encounters that resulted because of widespread ignorance about the facts of HIV/AIDS and his own deeply internalized shame.

After much prompting by the Walker family, Saul finally agrees to get tested. At the testing center, he learns that it is possible to carry the virus for many years without showing symptoms of the disease (and that HIV-infection rates are currently rising among the elderly thanks to sexual enhancement drugs).

Later, after phoning in to get the results of his test (something not allowed in most testing centers), Saul tells the family that he is fine, that he has tested negative.

But the family is later involved in a car crash at the end of the episode -- an accident that ends up taking Robert McCallister's life. Saul is injured as well and is bleeding, but when Kevin approaches to help him, he says, "Don't touch me! You can't."

While the whole blood-phobia scene at the end irked me a bit, I do agree with Hartinger that it is good to see HIV/AIDS on the small screen. Over the years, network and cable television has tackled the subject on many shows, including St. Elsewhere, ER, Commander in Chief, Life Support and Queer as Folk, to name a few.