By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In The X-Files, there are few recurring characters more popular than The Lone Gunmen, a trio of uber-nerds who often help Mulder and Scully with their weirdest investigations. Each member of this group has a very unique personality, including Melvin Frohike, a character mostly known for hitting on Scully and being a general pervert. According to Frohike actor Tom Braidwood, his X-Files’ characters horny nerd personality was cemented in the episode “E.B.E” by his two-word description of Scully: “She’s hot.”
Frohike And Scully
As recorded in the excellent book The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies, Braidwood looks back a bit ruefully at his character being such a pervert throughout the series. The frequent X-Files guest star said, “That all resulted from the first episode where my line was ‘She’s hot,’ which destined me to being a lech for the rest of my career.” And sure enough, Frohike perving on Scully became one of the defining elements of this character throughout most of the series.
Incidentally, when X-Files veteran Braidwood claimed that the “She’s hot” line doomed his reputation for the rest of his career, he was only half kidding. For the first five seasons of the show, he served as an assistant director, and making onscreen appearances as Frohike was just something he did when the episode called for it. While he has appeared onscreen in other projects, his acting career is still predominately defined by appearances in 40 episodes of The X-Files and 13 episodes of The Lone Gunmen spinoff show, and his character in this universe never did shake his perverted reputation.
Why, though, would this beloved X-Files’ character have his reputation sealed simply by saying, “She’s hot” about Scully (especially considering the entire fandom agrees)? Reading between the lines, it seems like this was because the writers and producers weren’t entirely sure what fans loved about the characters. The Lone Gunmen were introduced in the episode “E.B.E,” and they were based on a real-life trio of people that writer Glen Morgan met at a UFO convention whom he was compelled to include in his show (albeit as fictional adaptations).
The Lone Gunmen Are Loved
However, Morgan and his writing partner James Wong were initially convinced that they did a poor job introducing The Lone Gunmen to this exciting fictional universe. Later, the producers informed them that the trio of characters was very popular with fans on the internet, and fan feedback often dictated what the writers did. For example, early online ‘shipping is why Mulder and Scully eventually became a romantic item. Because The Lone Gunmen were so popular in their debut episode, they appeared dozens more times, eventually getting their own spinoff series.
What does this X-Files history have to do with Frohike and his fateful declaration of, “She’s hot?” It seems the writers didn’t like what they did with The Lone Gunmen and were correspondingly surprised that fans loved these characters so much. Because the writers didn’t necessarily know what they did right in the first place, this trio became very static and changed little from beginning to end; therefore, Frohike started the show as a weird little horndog and ended the show the same way.
While it can be a bitter pill for fans to swallow, Tom Braidwood’s tale about Frohike is a fun reminder of how much the early X-Files writers and producers were flying by the seat of their pants. Nobody knew exactly who or what would be popular, and once they got the collective internet verdict, the show’s creatives tended to go all-in on what fans wanted to see, right down to prominently featuring a trio of paranoid geeks. Plus, Braidwood can only complain so much. Sure, his character might be a “lech,” but in our estimation, he’s always been the funniest of this trio, both onscreen and off.
