Commentary: ‘Free Bert’ Creates An Awkward Real Life Fiction

Stories that often blend fiction and nonfiction dance a very fine line, especially when audiences are familiar with the true story and real life characters involved in the drama. Very often actors and comedians will star as fictionalized versions of themselves, depicting their lives in a very comedic fashion. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a great example, which sees Larry David acting as a very difficult and satirical man called “Larry”. Free Bert tries to do something similar with Bert Kreischer, incorporating his comedy about his family into scripted situations. But because of the way Kreischer included his family into his act, the show ends up coming off wonky.

The series follows Kreischer as he tries to navigate the drama involved in his daughters Ila (Lilou Lang) and Georgia’s (Ava Ryan) middle school. He and his wife, LeeAnne (Arden Myrin), try to befriend popular and influential parents at the school with varying degrees of success. LeeAnne manages to send a mother into epileptic shock by passing off store-bought cookies as homemade. Meanwhile, Bert courts a young boy to become Georgia’s boyfriend.

It does a decent job portraying the characters as a tight-knit family based off of the comedian’s real family. His daughters are older now, so actresses were cast in the roles. But this is obviously not Kreischer’s family. That’s not an issue in-and-of-itself, but he has included his family in his comedy a lot. The real LeeAnne has even appeared on several podcasts with him and been a part of his reality show The Cabin. So it’s a bit jarring to see fictional portrayals of people the audience is already familiar with. This is in contrast to Curb Your Enthusiasm, which goes all in with a fictionalized version of David’s family. With Kreischer’s family already having a public presence, it makes for an awkward experience watching others take on those roles.

Free Bert is now streaming on Netflix.