Creamerie is a 2021 New Zealand SBS series and created by J.J. Fong, Perlina Lau, Roseanne Liang, and Ally Xue.
In the not too distant future, a viral plague has swept the earth. In a matter of weeks, it decimated 99% of men. The 1% were sent to The Facility in New Zealand but didn't survive. Or did they?
The plot centers around Alex (Xue), Jaime (Fong) and Philippa "Pip" (Lau) - a trio of dairy farmers who end up running over someone. Said someone is a man named Bobby (Jay Ryan), who reveals that there are other men still alive, caged in a place called The Facility. Now, they're being hunted by the Wellness cult and their deadly enforcer, the Bounty Hunter.
The trio's lives upended, they begin to peer deeper into the conspiracy in an attempt to see just how unwell Wellness really is.
Tropes present:
- Action Girl: Alex and Pip.
- Action Survivor: Bobby is an escapee from The Facility and can kick plenty of ass.
- Air Vent Escape: Alex, Jaime, Pip and Bobby have to escape the rising poisonous gas when they are locked in the Safe Place by crawling through the air vents. However, the air vent tapers out over distance, so Bobby actually ends up getting trapped at the shoulders.
- Apocalypse How: A rather-subdued Class 1. All the world's men are dead. However, the all-female society doesn't seem the worse for wear and has in fact grown into a borderline utopia. They've even somewhat solved the de-population problem with sperm banks, though only female babies have a chance at live birth. Turns out only most of the men are dead and the survivors have been secretly herded into living cattle whose seed is fueling Wellness' fascist utopia.
- Arc Words: "Abundance" is frequently mentioned in conjunction with Wellness and its values of positivity, and "scarcity" represents everything in opposition to what Wellness stands for. In Season 2, "No abundance, no life" is also repeated.
- Big Bad: Lane is the primary antagonist of the series.
- Big Sister Is Watching: Wellness keeps tabs on just about everyone and punishes any "civil negativity."
- Bounty Hunter: The Bounty Hunter is an enigmatic woman whose sole purpose is seemingly to hunt down any surviving males, including Bobby.
- Breeding Cult: Wellness is farming the remaining men for fresh sperm for when the remaining pre-virus supply inevitably runs out; aiming to use this as leverage to control the world from the shadows.
- Chekhov's Gun: Early on, Jaime mentions her husband Jackson and how much she misses him. Guess who shows up in the season finale?
- Co-Dragons: The Bounty Hunter is Wellness' enforcer and Jaime's seemingly-late husband Jackson is the architect of The Safe Place. Doc Garvey is also a co-conspirator in the breeding program as well.
- Covert Distress Code: Pip witnesses Wellness giving Viv Bliss and deduces that Wellness has been tipped off about Bobby and will be apprehending him, so she calls the farm to warn Jaime and Alex. Since she's at work, she uses the phrase "I'm thinking about growing out my fringe," which immediately prompts the others to evacuate the farm.
- Crapsaccharine World: The post-virus society has free healthcare and borderline world peace! It also requires every woman in the world to follow enforced weekly orgasms and menstruation leave; mandated by the fascistic Wellness cult that routine quells rebellion. Oh, and Wellness is torturing the last few men alive in a facility to farm them for their seed while preserving the status quo.
- Dark Action Girl: The Bounty Hunter, who's seemingly The Facility's enforcer.
- Depopulation Bomb: The virus that wiped out 99% of the world's men, and the final 1% died off shortly after. Post-viral society has mostly recovered thanks to the Lottery allowing new female babies to be born. Turns out that one percent's still out there under lock-and-key, their seed being used by Wellness to repopulate the world in their personal image.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Averted. When Wellness try to pressure/force Pip into raping Bobby for their amusement, it's presented as nothing other than depraved and disturbing for the both of them.
- The Dragon: The Bounty Hunter, who's routinely sent to capture any Facility escapees.
- Dystopia Justifies the Means: Implied to be the case for The Safe Place, which houses the last few remaining men as guinea pigs that will be drained of their sperm to replace Wellness' currently-dwindling supply.
- Fan Disservice:
- Jaime, reeling from being told that she is permanently ineligible for the sperm lottery, turns to Bobby for his sperm, handing him a cup for him to do the deed. When he stares blank-faced at her, she attempts to arouse him with some dancing and some stripteasing, all while crying.
- The very first scene depicts the men of Hiro Valley High rugby team in their topless or bare-arsed glory... while vomiting blood and succumbing to a deadly virus.
- The milking chair scene. (Which is precisely what your mind thinks it is) It isn't played for any titillation and everyone is appalled by the sight. Bobby's so disgusted by the sheer depravity of Wellness' plans he has to be restrained from strangling the supervisor then and there.
- Fate Worse than Death: The punishment reserved for the worst crimes in the Wellness Society is being "permed," which appears to be a permanent variant of the "Bliss" drug and involves a hole being drilled into the frontal lobe and leaves the person permanently mentally addled. This is what happens to Alex's mother Tilda four years prior to the events of the show for publicly suggesting that there are still men in the world. As an additional indignity, during Syncfest, Lane will show off these people as her "Lucky Girls".
- Gendercide: The main premise of the show. Nearly all men have died out and any artificial insemination from pre-virus stock result in the baby boys dying in utero. Baby girls however are just fine.
- Government Conspiracy: The official statement on the impact of the virus is that the men that survived it were taken to a Facility for safekeeping but didn't survive. Said Facility is actually a People Farm where the survivors are being drained of their sperm to support Wellness' plan to Take Over the World. Even though it takes place at the local level, it extends to the national level when some of the Prime Minister's cohorts are also co-conspirators and the Prime Minister is assassinated under mysterious circumstances, allowing Lane to step in as the interim Prime Minister.
- Government Drug Enforcement:
- Wellness punishes dissenters by injecting them with a drug called "Bliss," named for its ability to put someone into such a happy state they won't want to rebel anymore.
- The punishment reserved for the worst crimes will result in people being "permed" which involves a hole being drilled into one's frontal lobe and leaves them in a permanent state of Bliss. This punishment was given to Tilda, Alex and Jackson's mother, prior to the events of the series for suggesting that there are surviving men. Alex and Jaime are nearly given this punishment but are saved just in the nick of time.
- Happiness in Slavery: In Season 2, the "Lucky Boys", the most docile and subservient of Lane's male prisoners, refuse to leave the Facility and have been conditioned to accept meagre rewards like jellies. The second time they are being led to freedom, they set off their suicide bomb vests instead.
- Hidden Villain: Jaime's husband Jackson is revealed to have been the architect of the puzzle that led the heroes to The Facility.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Alex. She's abrasive and has an anti-authoritarian streak but she's loyal to her friends.
- Also Bobby, but his trauma makes it entirely Justified.
- Insistent Terminology: Eight years without men has affected the language that the people use, such as saying "Oh, my goddess" to express shock or surprise. Other terms, such as "guys," to address people in the second person plural, are actively discouraged for being triggering to women who remember the virus taking out all the men.
- Lady Land: Thanks to the plague, yes.
- The Lost Lenore: Jaime misses her husband Jackson. Episode 6 reveals he was the architect of The Facility.
- Mayor Pain: Not only is Lane the leader of the Wellness cult, she is also the mayor of Hiro Valley district.
- Open Secret: The general population is told that all men are dead, yet there's an established punishment for the offense of illegally harboring a man.
- People Farms: Played as literally as it possibly can be with The Safe Place, IE: The Facility. This is where male survivors end up, destined to be drained of their seed to fuel Wellness' plans of world conquest.
- Population Control: The Safe Place is a lure meant to stockpile men and farm them for their sperm to replenish Wellness' pre-virus stock for the Lottery. This will allow them to control the populace and (by extension) the world).
- President Evil: Subverted with the Prime Minister - while she does eye up Bobby, she is genuinely a nice person and a beloved leader. However, this is played horrifically straight when the Prime Minister is assassinated and then Lane is appointed the interim Prime Minister.
- Principles Zealot: Pip adheres to the rules imposed by Wellness, no matter how little it suits the situation. This is played for drama, like when her immediate and adamant reaction to discovering Bobby is to turn him in to Wellness, and is also played for laughs, like when she sticks to the residential speed limit during a high speed chase.
- Professional Butt-Kisser:
- Pip is clearly eager to gain social standing with Wellness, with the ultimate goal of gaining membership into Lane's exclusive social committee, and endures demeaning interactions with Lane and other members of the committee in order to ingratiate herself with them. She even hands Jaime, Alex, and Bobby over to Wellness to accomplish this goal. Luckily, she snaps out of it towards the end of the Season 1.
- Michelle, one of the Wellness committee members, is even worse than Pip - latching onto the alpha female in any given situation and shaping herself in their image.
- Refuge in Audacity: The reason the show's billed as a comedy.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The opening sequence shows the beginning of the virus wreaking havoc on men at Hiro Valley High, the bodies being taken out on stretchers, and the mass cremation of the bodies out on the field and being turned into a hill, all set to "What a Wonderful World" as covered by Reb Fountain and the Jubilation Sisters.
- Unconventional Vehicle Chase: Played with - the vehicles that the girls are driving are serviceable enough. It's just that Pip is usually driving... and sticking to the road safety rules. At one point, when they are being chased, she gets stuck driving in a circle around a small roundabout despite the pleas from her friends to just drive straight. When chasing the Hunter, she sticks to the residential speed limits and the Hunter predictably zooms out of reach.
- Visual Innuendo: In the titles, the dot above the "I" in Creamerie is shaped like the logo for Wellness. The logo resembles a vulva and clitoral wings with the clitoris at the top, which was likely chosen deliberately in-universe to represent female power.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Alex, Jaime and Pip quickly find themselves in disagreement on what to do with Bobby.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Alex and Jackson berate Jaime on separate occasions because when her son Oscar had died during the pandemic, she also turned in her husband Jackson to the Quarantine.
- Young and in Charge: The Prime Minister is a young woman with multi-coloured hair who had been in high school when the pandemic hit. That should place her within her early twenties.
