Citizen-Spy

The Irrelevant Expert 67
bee that enters the dollhouse that is his home and refuge. Although in facing
these challenges Mel is serving his country and completing vital missions, the
six-inch spy fights everyday objects and domesticated animals more than he
does Communist spies. Given that his world is one of such constant danger, it
is difficult to imagine that Mel could be of vital state importance—but this is
the central conceit of the program, that the future of the nation might rest
upon the actions of a fearful, shrunken agent.
In a sense, then, the show encapsulates—and exaggerates—the contradictory
discourses of vulnerability and invincibility that marked the 1950s spy programs.
Like Herb Philbrick, Mel is in constant danger, and his everyday environment
is one of anxiety and paranoia. As Mel explains, “The risks I encountered
as agent for the bureau were nothing compared to things that could happen to
me in the daily job of just ordinary living.” In his actions, the mundane and the
fantastic collide. In “Death Trap,” for example, Mel is flung from an automobile
in an accident and awakes to find himself in a tangled jungle. Realizing that the
“jungle” is common grass, he then plunges forward, only to encounter a gardener’s
brush fire. “I heard a series of explosions....I thought I was back on
Pork Chop Hill in Korea, but this fire was hotter than any battlefield!” The
domestic landscape has literally become a battlefield, an obstacle course of the