A typical episode of Rick and Morty is larger-than-life pandemonium. If Rick isn’t using laser swords to slice up hordes of insectoid aliens, he’s whisking his nephew Morty through multi-dimensional portals that make the stargate from 2001 look like an airport people-mover. But underneath that flurry of animation is still a family sitcom about life’s minor gripes. In the season 8 premiere, that includes the annoyance of someone stealing your phone charger.
[Ed. note: Setup spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty season 8, episode 1.]
“Summer of All Fears” opens in a future where a grown Summer (Spencer Grammer) is the technocratic overlord of a society devoted to phone chargers. Morty is living off the grid after a life of prison time, military service, and cell-phone-related horrors. Turns out, the brother-sister duo are actually stuck in a world simulation à la The Matrix, conceived as punishment by uncle Rick after they used his phone charger.
It isn’t surprising that the Rick and Morty writers found a fresh spin for a simulation-theory gag. The twist is that it’s built on the infuriating inconvenience of your phone charger going missing. Creator Dan Harmon tells Polygon he thinks he’s to blame for that plot point.
“I have tried to hoard them,” he says with despair, while recounting the origins of the premiere episode. “I’ve tried to lock them in boxes. They just disappear. They’re the new ‘sock in the dryer.’”
Showrunner Scott Marder says the Rick and Morty writers are always on the hunt for relatable problems as cores for their absurdist parodies. Harmon’s gripes were felt in the room. “Every year, there’s a different hookup to the phone!” he says. “So you’ve got a bunch of them that don’t even mean anything anymore. You’re always chasing for one that works.”
While phone charger fury might be relatable, Harmon admits his relationship with the dongles goes a bit deeper. They were once the centerpiece of a notorious Valentine’s Day present he gifted his ex-wife: a “beautiful bouquet” of iPhone chargers. Harmon swears the gift actually went over really well, and he “was proud of giving it,” because unlike most disposable Valentine’s Day gifts, the phone charger bouquet could charge a phone.
Even so, Harmon says, he thought of it as a present that was probably going to have a short shelf life: “Phone chargers, like flowers, feel like you’re just giving them to someone and they’re just going to vanish.”
