As the new season starts it is time to refresh your memory and recall where favorite characters were last seen.

As Person of Interest starts its 4th season on CBS Finch and Reese are back in the shadows, hiding now from Samaritan a competing machine using the very cameras that their machine had been relying on during the previous three seasons to help them.

Where Finch had set parameters within which his machine worked to protect people, then he closed the system, with hopes that would protect it from corruption, and abuse.  He never intended for his machine to evolve to the point it would choose one person over another, assign greater value to one person vs. another, but rather it was meant to place law and life above terrorism and crime.

At the end of Season 3 we were left with the belief that there was still hope, left in Padora’s Box (Finch’s Machine?) but Samaritan, the competing machine was now online, having targeted all those the machine thought might harm it, or run counter to it’s mission, the one who we hoped would control this great and powerful machine now turned to the machine and asked, “What are your commands for us?”

It served as a rather chilling end to a season that drifted further and further afield from the initial premise of people given nothing but a Social Security number, and based on that trying to figure out if this person they were interested in needed protection from someone, or needed help finding the right path and doing the right thing.

Another show returning tonight is Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is a show that John Mayo, of ComicBookPage.com and I have on our list of shows we plan to do a podcast about, there is truly that much to say about it.  The first season was uneven from one month to the next, but over the course of the season, especially in the second half, an interesting arc unfolded, and gave me hope that the second season of this show will find its feet.

Some fans lost hope early in the first season, before the show started to really understand itself, and that is a shame, as the show does deserve a second chance in that case.  The tie-in with Captain America: Winter Soldier was interesting, and while that movie is not required viewing to understand the season, it does enhance the audience’s understanding of the plot in S.H.I.E.L.D.

Perhaps more to the point, in a great many ways the Captain America movie provided a focus for the television show, and a destination for the first season, and a launch point for the second season.  The show which had a basic concept when it first hit the air has a specific goal and mission as the second season begins, and I believe it can only benefit from this.

As so often happens these days on television, several of the characters ended the first season in peril, and there is a lot to be said for re-watching the season 1 finale (available on the ABC website) before season 2 begins, to refresh your memory about who is healthy as can be, who is suffering in the wake of recent events, who has been dealt with, and who we may still need to deal with — I know I plan to re-watch the Beginning of the End today before prime time starts up.

If you don’t have time to watch Season 1 episodes before Season 2 begins tonight, wikipedia has brief recaps of each of the episodes, and the ABC website has more in-depth recaps available (click the word recap to the right of any episode).