Claire is a frail 6-year-old who is allergic to virtually everything, including wheat, ponies, and spices; 10-year-old Brian has learning problems and has been kept back three straight years in school, and has an oral fixation and pica.

The family's au pair housekeeper, Maria, is an 18-year-old Portuguese woman with a serious drinking problem; despite Eric's frequent attempts to keep her under control and focused, she stays passed-out drunk for hours at a time.

His boss, Paul Power (known as PP), is loud, rude and demanding; he has demoted Eric from Assistant Manager to a low-level clerk in an office sandwiched between the janitor's closet and the men's toilets.

At the end of almost every episode, as the climax of events cause Eric's stress to reach breaking point, the throbbing vein emerges from his temple and wraps itself around his neck, strangling and apparently killing him.

[2] The broadcast of the series on NBC in the United States replaced Mark Heap's voice with that of Hank Azaria, who also serves as a producer for the dub,[3] repurposing Eric as an American expatriate.

He also had a low opinion of the title character, calling him "an imbecilic stumblebum who appears to deserve the bad things that happen to him" and negatively comparing him to Homer Simpson.

He also thought the comparison to South Park in the series' promos was foolish, noted that it ran against another Americanized version of a British series—Whose Line Is It Anyway?—and remarked that "as good as it is to get some original programming in the summer, Stressed Eric is so routine that it's difficult to understand why it has won awards across the ocean.