Matthew Perry is best known to the world as Chandler Bing in “Friends,” but he was already a veteran actor by the time that series hit the airwaves. In the years leading up to it, Perry found work on a variety of TV shows, including “Growing Pains,” “Silver Spoons,” and “Empty Nest” — all of which were popular while they were on the air. In 1987, Perry nabbed his first multi-episode role by playing Chazz Russell in “Boys Will Be Boys,” which kept him busy for a full season.

He landed two more series before “Friends” sent out a casting call: “Sydney” in 1990 and “Home Free” in 1993. Perry appeared in both shows’ 13 episodes, and while he had some acting gigs between “Home Free” and “Friends,” it was his last major effort before putting on his sweater vest so he could get busy in “Friends” doing Chandler’s job of statistical analysis and data reconfiguration while cracking jokes at a coffee shop. 

“Home Free” is a rather underwhelming sitcom that never landed with viewers. It was canceled after its filmed episodes aired and succumbed to a fate shared by many TV series: Critics hated it, and audiences didn’t bother to show up to watch it. When “Home Free” was pulled from ABC’s roster, Perry jumped right back into pilot season, scoring a new one: “LAX 2194,” which was a sci-fi sitcom about Perry working at the LAX airport in the year 2194. When that pilot failed, Perry moved on to “Friends,” which defined his career.

“Home Free” aired as a mid-season replacement for ABC in 1993, and Perry starred in the lead role as Matt Bailey, a reporter who lives at home with his mother. When his sister moves back into the house with her two kids, Matt is bothered by the intrusion. He works at a local newspaper, where he complains about his lot in life to his fellow co-workers.

Much of the conflict in the series stems from Matt and his sister, Vanessa (Diana Canova), fighting like they did when they were children. It’s formulaic and tiring, so looking back, it’s easy to see why “Home Free” didn’t work. Critics at the time weren’t shy about decrying the series for offering nothing new. Variety called “Home Free” a “dysfunctional sitcom subpar for ABC’s Wednesday Night,” adding that “Perry’s charms stretch thin” given how little he has to work with (via TV Obscurities).

The series was Perry’s third in a row that failed after one season, which didn’t necessarily set him up for success with “Friends,” though there are some minor similarities between his characters. When “Home Free” failed and Perry went on to film the pilot for “LAX 2194,” he nearly kept himself from scoring the role of Chandler in “Friends.” Had the pilot worked out, he would have been committed. Fortunately for him and his fans, it wasn’t picked up, leaving Perry free to move on to the sitcom that would make him a household name.

If you’re a fan of Matthew Perry and want to check out “Home Free,” you’re going to find that difficult. The series wasn’t beloved by critics and was canceled because hardly anybody watched it. It technically could have been sold on VHS, but ABC wasn’t clamoring to pay to put out a release for a failed series. The distributor never wavered, and “Home Free” hasn’t arrived on DVD, Blu-ray, or anything else.

Now that digital streaming is a thing, it stands to reason that ABC might open its archives and allow the world to view “Home Free,” but that hasn’t happened and likely never will. While you can’t find any official platform that streams “Home Free” online, there are some unofficial copies available. The Internet Archive maintains a copy of the pilot episode for anyone to download or watch in a web browser, but unfortunately, the Archive just has that one episode.

You can sometimes dig up episodes and clips in about as terrible a quality as you can imagine on YouTube, but even these are difficult to find. They appear to be copies made from old VHS tapes people recorded when the series aired, so quality is an issue. Finding the full 13 episodes anywhere online is a challenge it appears nobody has yet to crack. Perhaps, like other series, fans will come out of the woodwork with copies one day, but until that time comes, “Home Free” remains an elusive and largely lost piece of television history.