Briefly, and on its most shallow level, Fringe chronicles the cases handled by a secret FBI division, Fringe Division, that deals with any cases that involve a form of pseudoscience dubbed "fringe science" from where the division got its name. Fringe Division consists of its leader,
Agent Broyles, and co-agents
Agent Dunham and
Agent Farnsworth. Working with Fringe Division are
Walter Bishop, and
Peter Bishop. The crimes handled by Fringe Division are almost always recognized as murder or suicide by the normal authorities, yet, through their investigation, Fringe Division usually sheds some rather telling light on the actual motives and reasoning by the supposed criminals. Such light also casts interesting shadows on the nature of violence as portrayed in the series.
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| The Fringe team investigating a crime where the victims were burnt rapidly to lumps of carbon. ©2008 Fox Broadcasting Co. |
To understand Fringe, one needs to first have an understand of what fringe science is. In a nutshell, fringe science is anything not included in normal science, from stereotypical mind control and other abnormal powers, to time travel with the nasty side effect of killing anything in close proximity to where you travel to, and not excluding punching holes between parallel universes to abduct your dead son's living counterpart. Fringe Division's job is to deal with these rather exotic crimes, and maintain normalcy in the world.
