Amy Jellicoe, the scrambled heroine of HBO's comedy-drama "Enlightened," has an explosive, tragicomic, mascara-streaked meltdown at her workplace in the series' first scene. Then she takes refuge in Hawaii for several months at a New Age-y treatment center to get her head back together.

Now she's telling herself that she's recovered and newly empowered. Off her meds, with her manic-depression in full swing, she's back to reclaim her job as an executive for her corporation's health and beauty department.

But more than that, she's ready to change the world.

By turns funny, heartbreaking and rapturous, "Enlightened" is a portrait of a damaged woman who sets her sights on being an activist and not a sad joke; a woman who may be delusional or, instead, have found herself some valuable answers worth sharing with the human race - or maybe both. (It premieres Monday at 9:30 p.m.)

As played by the splendid Laura Dern, Amy is endearingly quixotic in her mission as a would-be eco-warrior, while cringingly pathetic to behold when trying to "clear the air" with the married boss with whom she had a disastrous affair, or when trying to master something as simple as a fax machine.

How much can Amy really hope to change the world, or even a corner of her own little world, which includes her standoffish mother (played by Diane Ladd, Dern's mom) and her druggy ex-husband, Levi (Luke Wilson)? "Enlightened" keeps the viewer rooting for Amy to succeed while fearing for her tendency to whirl out of control.

"We wanted her to be a champion in some areas, a disaster in others," says Dern. "What's fun about Amy for me to play is that I felt like she was a person who would fall through the cracks in the medical profession, where no one would have a diagnosis or specific help for her." Poor Amy is a misfit even to doctors.

The series is a meditation on the role of "craziness" in self-discovery and human interaction.

For Dern (whose credits include such classic films as "Blue Velvet" and "Jurassic Park"), "Enlightened" sprang from her Emmy-nominated portrayal of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in HBO's 2008 political drama "Recount."

That film left Dern feeling frustrated, wondering anew how people stood by for such a travesty? After all, this is an actress whose favorite childhood movie was "Network," with its mad-prophet anchorman, Howard Beale.

She says rage isn't her style, confiding, "I kind of panic and placate because I don't want people to be uncomfortable. But I wanted to play a rager - someone who was sometimes ineffectual, but perhaps was also sometimes successful as a voice of protest and a whistle-blower."

Meanwhile, Mike White, Dern's co-executive producer of "Enlightened," brought his own issues to the project. Along with "Dawson's Creek" and "Freaks and Geeks" and the films "School of Rock" and "Nacho Libre," White's producing-writing credits include "Cracking Up," a short-lived 2004 Fox comedy about psychiatric care.

"Cracking Up" was not a happy experience. White says that, as the show's creator-showrunner, he was besieged by so much network interference that he himself almost cracked up.

"It got so stressful," he recalls, "that I had a kind of Amy-meltdown where I was sending crazy faxes to people saying, 'You're liars! (Expletive) all of you!' After that, I figured my career was over."

Besides, the soulless company for which she works doesn't really want her back. Instead of reclaiming her former position, Amy is banished to the dungeon depths of a data processing center staffed with other misfits.

"But as the season unfolds," White says, "she realizes that being down there provides the key to all the malfeasance of the company - she's in the brain center!"

White (who wrote all 10 of the season's episodes) liked the idea of making Amy's employer her archrival, and thus putting the heroine behind enemy lines.

"Then, as the season progresses, she faces the question of how much change can you make from within? And after that, what's the next step - which builds to a showdown between her and the powers-that-be."

The result is a captivating performance. But is it easy for Dern to embody this character with all her extremes?

"Will I scare you if I tell you yes?" she replies and bursts out laughing.