Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 28, 2026
For those unfamiliar with Bert Kreischer and his place in the comedy ecosystem, put it this way: He runs adjacent to the Joe Rogan crew, but more as a court jester than a fellow traveler. He’s not an ideological comic, so he doesn’t traffic in conspiracy theories or really touch politics at all. He’s friendly with anti woke comics without being one himself, and he’s cordial with Marc Maron, though they’re not exactly pals.
Kreischer is a “party comic,” closer to Bobby Lee’s lane, though not as sharp, or Tom Segura’s, except a bit better. He’s sort of like Dane Cook, except instead of projecting swagger, he leans into oversharing and self humiliation. Kreischer is the drunk at the party who’s amusing in small doses, but not someone you’d want to spend extended time with.
He’s not my thing, but I don’t actively dislike him, either. His schtick is performing stand up without a shirt, and that’s also the entire premise of his new Netflix series, Free Bert, which I briefly hoped might be even mildly self reflective. It is not. It’s just Bert Kreischer’s stage persona stretched into a middling, predictable, and raunchy “family comedy.”
The series opens with Kreischer, playing himself, being invited to perform at Rob Lowe’s birthday party. Instead of wanting stand up, however, Lowe just wants to watch him take his shirt off repeatedly, because that’s his whole deal. This triggers a brief crisis of conscience for Kreischer, who starts to wonder whether anyone actually finds him funny beyond the shirt removal.
At home, he’s married to LeeAnn (Arden Myrin, who is better than this) and has two daughters. The youngest, Ila (Lilou Lang), is one of those precocious, wise beyond her years stock characters who mostly exists as a supportive sounding board. The older daughter, Georgia (Ava Ryan), is an insecure 13 year old desperate to be popular at her new Beverly Hills school and perpetually mortified by her father.
In a misguided attempt to boost her social standing, Kreischer appears on a Twitch stream with T Pain and Pacman Jones and says something about how his daughter has never given a hand job. The clip goes viral, deeply humiliating Georgia. After a dumb conversation with the school therapist, Kreischer vows to turn over a new leaf. He starts wearing shirts in public and tries to ingratiate himself with the rich, awful parents of the other kids. It does not go well. He and his wife end up stacking lie upon lie to maintain these fragile relationships with terrible people. Not that Bert Kreischer is a mensch, exactly. Still, amid the barrage of over the top dick jokes and deeply uncomfortable situations, that’s the point: He keeps twisting himself into pretzels to be someone he fundamentally does not want to be.
This will sound more complimentary than the show deserves, but imagine Adam Sandler at his laziest, combine that with Curb Your Enthusiasm if Larry David had suffered a brain injury, then add a heavy dose of ’90s era raunch, and you’ve essentially reverse engineered Free Bert. It’s not good, even a little. To its credit, it’s also not quite as bad as I expected. But I set the bar extremely low. All of which is to say: If your expectations for Free Bert are beneath the floorboards, below the basement floor, and six feet into the frozen tundra, you might not hate it. You’ll just vaguely dislike it, except for those moments when you’re actively appalled by the success of this man’s career.
So, no: He’s not funny with his shirt on, but I didn’t find him particularly funny without it.
