Entertainment
Polarizing Comedian's Raunchy New Netflix Series Is A Refreshing Take On A Tired Trope
By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’m going to lay all my cards out on the table and admit that I am not really a fan of Bert Kreischer’s comedy or public persona. After his 2016 and 2018 comedy specials, The Machine and Secret Time, I saw all I needed to see because he’s pretty much a one-trick pony who doesn’t really change up his act. He does that trick well, but I pretty much saw everything I needed to see. He takes his shirt off, tells out-of-pocket stories about his family, and presents himself as your average everyman who always wants to be the life of the party, and his die-hard fans love it.
On podcasts, he talks with too much self-importance, inserts himself into every one of his guests’ stories, and has a laugh that makes me want to shove a live earwig into my head and let it start chomping away at my brain.
The only reason I wanted to check out his new Netflix series, Free Bert, was to hate-watch it. I rarely do this, but I also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt because series and movies starring stand-up comedians are hit or miss, depending on the writing and acting. I can’t stand Jerry Seinfeld when it’s just him and a microphone, but throw Larry David’s writing in the mix, along with characters like Elaine, George, and Kramer, and you have a great show like Seinfeld.
I feel the same way about Bert Kreischer in Free Bert for reasons I’m about to get into. If you like the idea of Bert Kreischer, but think he’s a little much, Free Bert offers the balance you may be looking for.
Based On His Comedy, But Reeled In Just Right
The best way I can describe Free Bert is as your typical raunchy family sitcom, with all the familiar beats. You have Bert, obviously portrayed by Bert Kreischer, an overweight, dim-witted husband who’s repeatedly humbled by his conventionally attractive wife LeeAnn (Arden Myrin), and two foul-mouthed daughters, Georgia (Ava Ryan) and Ila (Lilou Lang). It’s a real Married … with Children kind of setup that almost always works. It especially works for Kreischer in this context because I already said I find his persona unlikeable, and half the fun is watching him get his ass handed to him by his own hare-brained schemes while his family laughs at him for being so stupid.
As for Free Bert’s six-episode story arc, Bert’s kids go to private school and have trouble fitting in, mostly because their dad is Bert Kreischer. Bert immediately gets in trouble with the school after some of his stand-up bits are shared with the faculty, humiliating his daughters. In his efforts to smooth things over, Bert starts wearing a shirt and trying to fit in with the other parents.
When Bert learns that Georgia has a crush on Zac (Braxton Alexander), he’s devastated because he’s worried that he’s going to have somebody trying to Netflix and chill with his daughter. Learning from Zac’s father Randy (Matthew Del Negro) that he’s about to undergo scrotal surgery, he instead encourages the relationship because it means that Zac won’t be able to make a move on Georgia, at least any time soon.
Meanwhile, LeeAnn faces obstacles of her own because she’s also trying to smooth things over with the Vanderthal family, but is constantly condescended to by the family matriarch, Chanel (Mandell Maughan). Her husband, Landon (Chris Witaske), has also befriended Bert, resulting in exactly the kind of crossed wires and miscommunications you’d expect from a family sitcom operating in this lane.
Everybody Knows The Assignment Here
While I’m not going to climb the highest mountain and tell everybody to watch Free Bert because it’s the best show ever, I have to give credit where it’s due. If this was just a new show and you had never heard of Bert Kreischer in your life, he kills it here. He reliably dials in as your typical sitcom dad, and his family provides the perfect balance.
I was most impressed by Lilou Lang’s portrayal of Ila because she constantly puts her dad in his place, but there’s also an underlying affection and alliance that holds it all together. That dynamic ends up doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Kreischer could have really messed this up by leaning too hard into all of his bits and shtick, but Free Bert is smart enough to establish that he’s a comedian who takes his shirt off, needs to change his public persona so his family can be taken seriously, and then actually follows through on that idea. He’s straight-faced when he needs to be, and the moments where he goes full Bert are chosen carefully so he doesn’t wear out his welcome.
It feels like all of the best parts of Kreischer’s act have been distilled into an easily digestible sitcom setting, and he just rolls with it. The result is a surprisingly satisfying watch. I won’t be keeping an eye out for any more of his comedy specials, but if Free Bert gets renewed for a second season, I’ll check it out. Six-episode seasons are nothing, and there’s real potential here.
Free Bert is streaming on Netflix.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for April 19, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
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If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
The edge.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
BRINK
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Hurdle Word 2 hint
Moody.
Hurdle Word 2 Answer
POUTY
Mashable 101 Fan Fave: Nominate your favorite creators today
Hurdle Word 3 hint
America’s bird.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
EAGLE
Hurdle Word 4 hint
A platform.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
FORUM
Final Hurdle hint
Cheapskate.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
MISER
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Star Trek’s Most Ambitious Villain Helped Create The Franchise’s Most Complex Hero
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When Star Trek: Voyager first came out, the most fascinating character was the Doctor. While Robert Picardo’s performance was superb, it’s fair to say this character was mostly fascinating on a conceptual level. We had seen things like hypercompetent Starfleet captains and exotic aliens before, but what we hadn’t seen was a fully holographic chief medical officer. Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram seemed like the perfect embodiment of the Star Trek ethos. He’s a technological strange new world and new life, all rolled into one.
However, what casual audiences didn’t realize is that the Doctor wasn’t completely unique. Long before Picardo’s character ever sawed bones in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Picard dealt with another extraordinary hologram: Moriarty, the brilliant foe of the famous investigator Sherlock Holmes. Over on The Next Generation, Geordi LaForge accidentally created this villain as a sentient hologram when he asked the holodeck to create a challenge worthy of the android Data. Later, Star Trek: Voyager executive producer Jeri Taylor revealed that, in-universe, the holographic Doctor was created because Starfleet took advantage of the same accidental breakthrough that created Moriarty!
It all started in “Elementary, My Dear Data,” the Next Generation episode in which the titular android and Geordi LaForge recreated Sherlock Holmes’ adventures on the holodeck. Thanks to his positronic brain and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes novels, Data is able to easily solve every mystery that is thrown at him. That’s when Geordi makes a seemingly simple request. He asks the Enterprise computer to develop a holodeck foe that could actually defeat Data, one of the smartest beings in the entire galaxy.
The computer obliges and creates a sentient version of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ greatest foe. Following Geordi’s instructions, the Enterprise computer included much of Data’s vast programming, which resulted in the holographic character becoming self-aware. Moriarty ended up threatening the Enterprise on two different occasions, and Picard eventually got rid of him by trapping the unknowing villain in a simulation where he thought he had left the holodeck and could explore the stars. This was meant to be a happy ending for Moriarty, but in the show’s typically bleak fashion, Star Trek: Picard later showed us a different, more hostile version of this character created by a malevolent Section 31 AI.
How A Villain Created A Hero
What does all of this have to do with Robert Picardo’s holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager? Elementary, my dear reader! Very early in Voyager’s development (the show didn’t even have a name yet), executive producer Jeri Taylor was inspired by Moriarty to create a new character. As reported in A Vision of the Future-Star Trek: Voyager, Taylor wrote down notes for a holographic doctor “who, like Moriarty, has ‘awareness’ of himself as a holodeck fiction. He longs for the time when he can walk free of the Holodeck.”
A few days later, she wrote down additional notes that contain a startling bit of Star Trek lore. “The Holo-Doctor represents a new, state-of-the-art technology which has capitalized on the serendipitous incident which created Moriarty, and has programmed a holographic character which has self-awareness of his situation and limitations.” While Moriarty is name-dropped on Voyager a couple of times, the show never mentioned what Taylor’s notes seem to confirm: that Lewis Zimmerman could never have created the Emergency Medical Hologram program if not for Geordi LaForge accidentally creating Moriarty on the holodeck.
From Villain To Leading Man?
If that’s not strange enough, there was a period of time when Voyager’s producers were considering making Moriarty a mainstay character on the show. As reported in Star Trek–Where No One Has Gone Before, Taylor’s notes mentioned that “everyone agreed that was a little too broad, and we couldn’t figure out why anyone would take him along.” After dismissing the idea, they decided “that having a holographic doctor with the full consciousness of being a hologram might be fun, and we’d never done anything like that before, except for Moriarty.”
There you have it, gentle reader. Without the character of Moriarty on Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’d never have the Doctor on Voyager. In this way, Trek’s most ambitious villain helped create the franchise’s most complex hero. Thanks to Jeri Taylor’s notes, we also know that, in-universe, Lewis Zimmerman would never have been able to create the Doctor if not for Geordi accidentally creating a sentient Moriarty so Data could have fun. In retrospect, this does make Zimmerman’s arrogance that much weirder. After all, he has a lot of attitude for someone who owes his entire career to the two biggest book nerds in the galaxy!
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on April 19
After days of almost (and complete) darkness, the Moon is finally starting to reappear. We’re currently in the Waxing Crescent phase of the lunar cycle, which means each night until the Full Moon we’ll see it get more illuminated from the right side.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Sunday, April 19, the Moon phase is Waxing Crescent. Tonight, 5% of the moon will be lit up, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide.
Despite more of it now being illuminated, the percentage of surface is still too little to be able to spot any surface details. Check again tomorrow.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon is predicted to take place on May 1, the first of two in May.
What are Moon phases?
NASA states that the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit Earth, during which it passes through eight distinct phases. We always see the same side of the Moon, but the amount of sunlight reflecting off it changes as it moves along its orbit, creating the familiar pattern of full, partial, and crescent shapes. We call these the lunar phases, and there are eight in total:
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
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Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
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