This comic made me more than moderately confused:
…
I haven’t watched an American television game show in over three decades. I assume that they still exist, but I have no idea whether this comic might be playing on some current development in the genre.
Comics I Don't Understand 
car or cable for mobile?
Phone (and other portable device) chargers are the new TV remotes: Always getting misplaced and moved around. I suspect this is a little autobiographical and Stahler spent too much time searching for one, imagined the process as a game show, and thought it was fun enough to draw. I don’t think the specific game show format is important, just that it’s a game show rather than a frustrating chore.
It might have worked in a multi-panel format, perhaps with the announcer gleefully commenting when someone finds a lost sock, incompatible charger, or the Whammy. As it is, it feels like an idea waiting to be riffed on.
Chargers for cars are stationary. This is just a common household question presented in a generic game-show format. Several game shows have had questions in the title, such as What’s My Line? and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
So far as I know, it doesn’t refer to a specific U.S. game show. It does resemble the type of satires of the game show genre that appear on Saturday Night Live.
Here’s some examples: Top 10 Hilarious SNL Game Show Parodies (youtube.com)
larK asks “What’s with “Greetings from Carmen”??”.(Not in this immediate spot)
If you mean the name, my guess was they were thinking of Carmen Sandiego.
Kilby, even if you haven’t watched a U.S. game show in decades, you would find many have endured: Jeopardy, The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, Password, The $10,000 Pyramid, To Tell the Truth all are either still around or get periodically revived.
How could I be so thick?!
Even well before this was posted here, when we first had it for discussion, I totally misinterpreted the “Where is my charger?” text. I finally picked up from the discussion today that it is just a fancy display of the game show’s title. I for a long while thought it was an elaborately decorated speech bubble, of someone offstage to house right, and shouting so loud that their speech bubble extends to the onstage area. So maybe a third contestant, who needed to charge up their device before going up to play, and delayed even past the official start of the show by retrieval efforts.
Yep, all out of nonexistent cloth.
And maybe compounded by intrusion of a geezerish association forcing a misunderstand the interaction of mediaarteducation at 1 and Powers at 3 over what role a “car” note might play. Of course in this age of EVs and the search for places to charge them, that’s what “car” means to anybody, in context of >looking for a charger< . But I was seriously about to “correct” Powers and “clarify” that of course mediart would have been alluding to the Dodge Charger model of car. Presumably being mentioned by the offstage contestant, now seen to be a winner from a previous round demanding a prize they thought they had won but now being denied by trickery — the Dodge Charger.
If you mean the name, my guess was they were thinking of Carmen Sandiego.
Ahhh, it’s all so clear to me now! (Thanks, Dana!)
Shall we dispatch Dora to find Carmen?
There’s an interesting thought, Mitch4: an electric version of the Dodge Charger car.
@ Dana Kay (5) – Not “they“, just me, the circuitous title was all my fault.
P.S. @ larK (8) – Dora might be able to locate Carmen, but she won’t be able to find the Chargers, because they skipped town and moved to Los Angeles seven years ago.
P.P.S. @ zbicyclist (6) – I knew that at least some of them still existed, but as you mentioned @4, the scene in the comic didn’t match any show that I remembered, so I figured that Stahler must have been playing on something more recent. Thankfully, of all the TV garbage that gets recycled and exported to Germany, American game shows have not been successful here. I was going to mention “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” as a notable exception, but it turned out to be a British invention.
I have one 115v charger, which came with the iPad when I got it back in 2017 or so. It is at the house, in the bedroom. There’s also a 12v charger in the Venerable Bronco. Both are USB-A. When I got a phone around a year ago, it came with no charger and just a USB-C cable. I thought about getting a C charger, but in the end just got an A to C cable.
The Fancy New Apartment has built-in charge ports in the kitchen and both bedrooms. Additionally, I bought a relatively inexpensive “stick lamp” for the bedside table, and it has a USB port. All of those are USB-A, so the choice to get an adapter cable ended up being a good choice. It also allows connecting the phone to the PC to transfer files and whatnot without emailing them.
Recalling an old cartoon of a gaudy game show set with the name “Whose Idea Was This, Anyway?” Everybody is giddy and excited because one grumpy contestant is asking that exact question.
At home-
Each TV/cable box remote has a specific location for it – in the bedroom we each have a remote on our nightstand – he is in charge until he falls asleep – then I have control. They do NOT get lost.
Cell phone chargers are kept on my dresser in the bedroom as they are charged on my dresser overnight. (Along with a few old phones of mine that I use for various non-phone call purposes.)
When we travel in our little RV –
The remote is kept in the plastic box hanging on the headboard for this purpose.
The cell phones are put on the small counter, which make up the entire kitchen, where there is a set of outlets to charge them.