Why ‘Welcome Home’ is a must-see for 30-somethings
Some of the best television is written based on true experiences. Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David’s way of going after his Hollywood experiences. Aziz Ansari brought his experiences of being Middle Eastern in NYC to life in Master of None. But these are celebrities bringing to life their past experiences long after they became famous. On the other hand, writer Bobby Chase is not well known in Hollywood, but will be now with the second season of his show Welcome Home, based on real life and returning to Amazon Prime.
After attending SUNY Plattsburgh, Chase moved to NYC to work in the indie film world and was doing well, until the money stopped coming in. After couchsurfing for a while, Chase was sick of the unstable job market and moved back to upstate New York. Bobby Chase then took up a career within the advertising industry until he could get enough money to take another go at the film industry. The stories told in Welcome Home are based on his experiences after moving back home. Chase and his friends Dan Martin, Justin Alvis, and Amanda Stankavich all teamed up to turn those stories into the successful and award-winning first season of the Amazon Prime comedy.
Of course, it’s been three years since the first season of Welcome Home premiered, but Bobby Chase has kept himself busy. In honor of his brother who took his own life, Chase created the short film Jacob that told the story of the day his brother died and how he used humor as a coping mechanism. The second season of Welcome Home is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime, and you can follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We were lucky enough to sit down with the director and writer of the show Bobby Chase to talk about the show and his growth over his career.
Legacy and Availability Today
Welcome Home remains a two-season series available on Amazon Prime Video. The premise follows three millennials who move back in with their parents after life delivers a few hard knocks, and the show’s tone stays grounded in that specific slice of adult limbo. Listings on the platform still describe the comedy in the same terms Chase outlined years ago, which keeps the original intent intact even as the cast and crew have moved on to other day jobs. For viewers who missed the initial run, the complete series sits ready without any new seasons added since the second dropped. That limited footprint makes the show feel like a time capsule of late-2010s indie comedy rather than an ongoing franchise.
Impact of the Jacob Short Film
Chase’s short film Jacob aired on PBS and later appeared on Amazon and IndieFlix. It earned two Audience Choice Awards and Best Drama at the New York State International Film Festival. The project grew directly from the day Chase found his brother after a suicide, and the director folded his usual sense of humor into the grief without softening the weight of the event. Proceeds continue to support the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The film stands apart from Welcome Home in tone, yet the same impulse to locate comedy inside hard circumstances runs through both works. Audiences who connect with the series often find Jacob offers a clearer window into the personal stakes that shaped Chase’s writing.
Indie Filmmaking Challenges in the Streaming Era
Chase described season two as a logistical sprint that involved 68 speaking roles, more locations than the first season, and three cast members who became pregnant right before cameras rolled. Most of the core team held full-time jobs outside the production, so scheduling turned into a constant negotiation. He stressed the need to rewrite on set when problems surfaced and to keep a balance between an initial vision and practical compromise. Those pressures have only grown for indie creators working in a market where platforms favor quick turnarounds and established talent pools. Without a third season or announced follow-up series, Welcome Home remains Chase’s clearest public example of how a small crew can stretch limited resources while still landing on a major streamer.
Chase studied audio production at SUNY Plattsburgh before a television writing class pulled him toward scripts. He wrote a Seinfeld spec that felt more natural than sound design, then spent time in Brooklyn producing web series and interviewing comedians such as Will Ferrell. Financial strain eventually sent him back upstate, where he produced commercials at a CBS affiliate before reconnecting with Martin, Alvis, and Stankavich to develop Welcome Home. Early comedy influences included John Hughes, Harold Ramis, Judd Apatow, and Seth MacFarlane. He still writes, produces, directs, and edits most of his projects, arguing that learning multiple roles gives an artist more control and a clearer voice on screen.
Before film and television, Chase worked at a car wash, a fire and water restoration company, a summer camp, and K-Mart. He also ran a mobile DJ business in high school and interned at GE, where he learned how to navigate conversations even when the technical details escaped him. Those odd jobs fed directly into the humor of Welcome Home, which treats the embarrassment of returning home as a shared rather than solitary experience. Chase has said the concept came from watching friends cycle through the same move, and the series leans on that collective recognition rather than any single character’s arc.
Chase advises new filmmakers to make bold, specific choices instead of chasing broad appeal. He believes a unique voice is the one asset that cannot be replicated, and he encourages writers to protect that specificity without turning every disagreement into a fight. He also notes that wearing multiple hats, while exhausting, lets an artist communicate more effectively with cast and crew because each department understands the pressures on the others. Those lessons surface again in his comments about balancing vision and compromise on Welcome Home, where last-minute script changes became routine once pregnancies and work schedules collided.
After wrapping Welcome Home, Chase completed the short film Dementia, which premiered at the Adirondack Film Festival. He had been developing a feature and a limited series, though neither has surfaced in public releases. The absence of further seasons for Welcome Home aligns with the pattern of many indie comedies that land on streamers and then pause while the creators return to day jobs. Chase’s next visible work has stayed in the short-film lane, where he can maintain full control without the scheduling demands of a multi-episode production.
Chase credits two early mentors with shaping his path. College advisor Tim Clukey guided him through audio work and digital media navigation, while editor and motion-graphics teacher Jeff Knight later hired him for freelance audio after Chase offered to work for free. Both relationships formed organically rather than through formal outreach, and Chase suggests that most useful mentorships grow the same way. He continues to value hands-on learning over abstract advice, which shows in his preference for spending the bulk of production time on the script because fixes there cost the least and matter the most.
Chase’s stated mission is to let viewers escape their own difficult days while learning from characters who stumble through similar messes. He draws inspiration from the ridiculousness of everyday life and its darker undertones, then uses humor to hold attention long enough for the lesson to land. That approach runs through Welcome Home, Jacob, and Dementia alike. The series may not have continued past two seasons, yet the themes of returning home and rebuilding remain relevant to anyone who has watched a post-college plan fall apart and then tried again with whatever resources were left.
