Stressed Eric review

We’ve all faced some level of stress from the COVID-19 fiasco. With the amount of deaths and how easy it is to get it, we all feel like we need to be on our toes. Sucks more when you’re obligated to work. So in stressful times, let’s go back to when stress came from life in general, across the pond.

Just to get this out of the way, Mr. Enter had reviewed this a while back, and was negative toward it. For me, I had seen the episode he reviewed before knowing about his review. I don’t like to take reviewers words over my own, hell, Saberspark thinks Family Dog has good animation and he singled out Fish Police among the trio of animated primetime flops. My first video from him fared as well as my second viewing of Family Dog.

Stressed Eric was produced in 1998 for BBC Two. The show was produced by Absolutely Productions, and no it’s not related to Abso Lutely Productions, who got called that to avoid confusion with the former company. This company was formed by principal actors from a sketch comedy show called Absolutely, and by default, some actors from that appear on this show as well (two I can easily peg, Gordon Kennedy who appeared in Red Dwarf, going by names I recognize, and Morwenna Banks, who I recognize from a guest appearance on The Critic.)

Another interesting thing to note on the producer side of things is the involvement of Klasky Csupo. I don’t know what led them to do this, but compared to their better known stuff, I can safely say the humans here look a bit more like actual humans, I mean, their mouths are where they need to be I guess. This only goes for the first season, with the animation later getting outsourced to Hungary.

Stressed Eric ran for two seasons between 1998 and 2000, the only other networks this aired on were TVNZ 2 in New Zealand, news to me as I imagine the country was more into regional programs, and it even aired on NBC in the US, more on that later. I’ve seen three episodes of this show, and I made it through to the end.

Plot (At Large)

Stressed Eric takes a look at the shortcomings of Eric Feeble, an officer worker, recent divorcee, father of a girl with a number of allergies and a mute boy with an eating disorder, lives next to doppelgängers for an extra stab, his au pair is always drunk, has a mean boss and an apathetic secretary, his wife phones him out of the blue most times- Okay, what doesn’t happen to this guy? It’s easy to see how this show would rub people the wrong way, like everyone’s out to get Eric and it blurs the line between relatable misfortune and sadism, but hey, people like to beat the shit out of cartoon characters, I don’t know what to believe anymore.

Going into this, I imagine this show would’ve had a sense of dread to it, but then I got properly acquainted to its humor. It’s not obvious, but it’s down to its wit and delivery. Not to mention, Eric is stressed, but not outright miserable, if he was he would’ve hung himself by now. His daughter Claire rubbed me as someone who would be afraid of everything, but like many young girls she is generally curious and most of her reactions are hardly fatal. The au pair has generic sitcom potential and some scenes with her do lighten up the tension, sometimes. The neighbors (Aptly titled the Perfects, bravo on subtlety), are generic overly perfect always fortunate individuals, though Eric’s ire seems to only extend to the patriarch, and appropriately so as he sees him the most often. He doesn’t seem to hold as much ire to Mrs. Perfect, at least from what I’ve seen on their one-on-ones. Lastly, Eric’s boss, Paul Power. Having got a good look at the guy, I can tell he practices a lot of restraint, he had moved Eric from different spots due to his stress affecting his quality of work, he doesn’t outright fire him and whatever happens on Eric’s end isn’t out of spite, but genuine work-related issues. Still a bit of a dick, but that’s the way the archetype goes.

For every episode, Eric’s stress boils down to one grand situation, and for every episode, something goes wrong toward the end, and a temple vein in his head goes off and strangles him. There’s no break from the formula to my knowledge, and maybe that’s why this didn’t last very long. The only thing preventing me from writing this off for that is, well, I guess nobody mocks Eric directly at his worst moment, the strangle occurs right at the end.

Animation

I didn’t see the second season, so I’m just gonna go by the animation in the first season. While it doesn’t have that signature Klasky-Csupo style most of the time, its movements are somewhere in the same ballpark, that is it harkens back to a time before computer programs took over, not that I care that much, I’d hardly consider Klaus to be a movie worth seeing. The designs are fluid, but they’re a bit rough around the edges, such is the way.

The environments are interesting though, featuring a dour color palette with oil-painted backgrounds. This helps convey a sense of monotony and slight dread, in other words this suits the theme of the show. Some errors do suffice, in the first episode, the boss’ hair changes from dark red to dark brown a couple of times.

But it’s not over yet

Remember how I said I’d save the show’s history on NBC for later? I’d say sit down, but this is unremarkable compared to other oddities on television then and now. Firstly, the context behind it. In my Family Dog review, I mentioned the big three’s history with animated programs. I talked about how NBC was late in the game when it came to prime time animated sitcoms, and that they basically dodged a bullet given what CBS and ABC dished out. NBC’s contributions were limited, but given that every animated sitcom they ever aired hardly made it past one season, I detect a lack of interest on their part.

Since this came out about a year after people declared The Simpsons jumped the shark, I think NBC decided to experiment a bit, but lacked the initiative to make something original. Don’t know what led them to pick this, it just happened. Is that why this warrants its own section? Nope, NBC wanted to make some changes, not much, just change the main actor and details on his upbringing.

In the main version, Eric’s voiced by Mark Heap, and in the NBC version he’s voiced by Hank Azaria. Interesting fact, Kathy Griffin appeared in Dilbert but couldn’t be credited due to an outstanding contract with NBC. I take it Fox is a lot looser when it comes to their stars. In this version, Eric is portrayed as an American who moves to the UK, and then we get the original premise. The dialog was altered to remove British allusions (basically Days Like These, but not as tacky.) The changes never affect the core plots, so it’s really just a different actor that’s the most noteworthy.

Compared to Heap, Azaria is… okay. Azaria isn’t a bad actor by any stretch, but he doesn’t hit the “about to burst from stress” notes Heap does. Though it isn’t terrible by any stretch, maybe a nuisance for those who hate unnecessary changes, but I’ve seen worse.

Overall

I think Enter just found a bad episode in the show. I’ve seen much meaner shows. Maybe this just hits too close to home for people who live like Eric does, maybe it’s just too cluttered when it comes to putting in misfortunes and we hardly have time to breathe, or maybe it’s because we know he’ll have a stress attack by the end of the episode.

All I know is that I saw that Stressed Eric episode Enter reviewed first and it never killed my interest in watching the show. It all depends on your kind of humor.

English version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_XKlp…

NBC version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-njd2M…