"Home Free"

Originally Published May 8th, 2004

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In March of 1993, ABC premiered Home Free, a new sitcom starring Matthew Perry as Matt Bailey, a young cub reporter for a small newspaper who lives with his widowed mother. When his older sister and her children move back home, Matt's easy-going life is turned upside-down. With three generations living under one roof, the chances for an easy transition seem slim. Sounds like a real winner, right? It wasn't. A timeslot change didn't help ratings any, and after only eleven episodes the show was cancelled. Thankfully, that gave Matthew Perry the chance to move on to NBC's Friends and sitcom stardom.

When ABC announced its 1992-1993 fall schedule, Home Free was one of several new programs the network held in reserve for the midseason, along with The Jackie Thomas Show starring Tom Arnold and Sirens, a drama about three policewomen [1]. The Jackie Thomas Show debuted in December of 1992 and aired through March of 1993; Siren premiered in March of 1993 and were gone by July, although there series continued for a second season in syndication.

As for Home Free, executive producer Tim O'Donnell was reportedly happy that his show would bow in midseason, although he hoped midseason would come around in late November of 1992, giving Home Free a late fall start [2]. According to O'Donnell, ABC wanted the series on the air as soon as possible, perhaps because Home Free was the network's highest testing pilot [3]. Eventually, ABC scheduled Home Free to premiere Wednesday, March 31st, 1993 at 8:30PM, replacing Doogie Howser, M.D. [4].

The series starred Matthew Perry as Matt Bailey, a twenty-something still living with his mother and working as a reporter at a small-town newspaper. His easy-going lifestyle is thrown into disarray when his older, divorced sister Vanessa, and her two kids Abby and Lucas, is forced to move back home due to financial woes. Vanessa was played by former Soap star Diana Canova and children by real-life siblings Anndi and Scott McAfee. Marian Mercer was Grace, Matt and Vanessa's widowed mother.

Making up the rest of the cast were Matt's co-workers at the paper: Alan Oppenheimer as owner Ben Brookstone, Dan Schneider as Matt's fellow reporter and best friend Walter, and Brooke Theiss as photographer and object of Matt's affections Laura.

Critics were savage in their reviews of the series. Rick Kogan of The Chicago Tribune said Home Free's "humor is in an inane class by itself" [5]. Matt Roush of USA Today praised Marian Mercer and little else, suggesting that ABC "have Mercer toss everyone out and retitle this Home Alone" [6]. The Washington Post's Tom Shales took things personally, wondering if shows like Home Free were made "to make my life a living hell" (he also wrote that the series "is so thoroughly lacking in distinctive traits that the images all but vaporize the instant they hit the screen") [7].

View a Scene from Home Free

Robert P. Laurence of The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that Home Free is "a TV show with no interesting characters and a situation as lifeless as its characters" that has "utterly nothing original about it" [8]. The Boston Globe's John Koch called Dan Schneider "a relief," saying "He has the rumpled, chubby charm of a young John Candy and is able to put some eccentric spin on even the most generic jokes" [9].

The premiere of Home Free averaged an 11.0/18 share, which, in comparison to the 21.9/34 rating a repeat of Home Improvement drew following Home Free, couldn't have made ABC executives happy [10]. Still, the first episode tied for 37th for the week [11]. The second episode fell considerably, tying at 72nd for the week with a 7.6 rating [12].

The 1992-1993 season ended on Sunday, April 18th, meaning only three episodes of Home Free were included in the season rankings. Those three episodes averaged an 8.9 rating, tied at 80th for the season with Civil Wars on ABC and Space Rangers and Picket Fences, both on CBS [13].

After only five episodes, ABC pulled the series following the April 28th broadcast. A month later, on May 28th, the series returned in a new timeslot, now on Fridays at 9:30PM. Six episodes were shown on Fridays, for a total of 11 -- whether or not additional episodes were produced and not shown is unknown. Home Free was cancelled when ABC announced its 1993-1994 schedule in May of 1993; also canned were Sirens, The Jackie Thomas Show, Doogie Howser, M.D. and Civil Wars [14].

Home Free wasn't a particularly good sitcom but neither was it a particularly bad one. It was simply too mundane to make much of an impression on viewers. The characters were unfortunately stereotypical, the plots trite. The conflict between Matt, a young man living with his mother, not worrying about rent and always having a hot meal waiting for him at the supper table, and Vanessa, a divorcee raising two kids forced to move back home, could have been an interesting character study. Instead, it quickly degenerated into a conflict between two adults acting like children -- which was neither interesting nor amusing, just sad.

The problem with Home Free was that the series should have been aired in the 1980s (and maybe not even then). As People magazine rightly noted, "everything about the show is strikingly dated: the writing, the way an 'important' moral lesson is extruded from each episode among the gags and especially the flaccid theme song [...] sung by Christopher Cross" [15]. Home Free could have found a nice home alongside Family Ties, Growing Pains and Head of the Class (which, incidentally, Dan Schneider starred in) during the family-friendly atmosphere of the 1980s.

View the Opening Credits to Home Free

For the record, here are the lyrics to the theme song:

Everything about Home Free felt like an attempt to recapture the glory days of the warm and fuzzy family sitcoms of the 1980s. There really were "lessons" that one or more of the characters were forced to learn by the end of any given episode. In the pilot, for example, Matt takes his niece and nephew along with him while he checks out a story on location. He not only manages to keep them out all night but he somehow convinces Abby that skipping school is acceptable. Vanessa, understandably upset, confronts Matt but by the end of the episode the two come to a shaky agreement regarding how Matt will act around Abby and Lucas in the future.

In another extremely hokey episode, Matt learned the hard way that being friends with someone sometimes means being tough with them in order to make sure they do the right thing. Other episodes saw Lucas getting grounded and Matt voluntarily missing a hot date to be "grounded" alongside him and teach Lucas a valuable lesson the whole Bailey family going out to their father's cabin and remembering the man; Matt and Vanessa each go on dates; and Matt getting a chance to go work for television news and realizing it wasn't the place for him.

View a Scene from Home Free

Furthermore, despite Matthew Perry's best efforts -- both comically and dramatically -- as Matt Bailey, Home Free suffered from a lack of clear definition. In trying to focus on both Matt and his family and Matt and his job, the series was pulled in two different directions. Was it a workplace comedy or a family sitcom? If it had stuck with Matt and his family and used the job as background instead of an equal portion of the show, perhaps the stories would have worked a little better.

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Last Updated June 26th, 2008