From the outset, a caveat to those who have not been watching NBC’s “Heroes:” Please don’t read this entry. You’ll either think I’m a raving lunatic, or that the show’s writers are raving lunatics, which makes me a raving lunatic for trying to make sense of it. It’d be a debacle akin to an “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” neophyte trying to sit through the recent “ATHF” movie.

That said, a mild scolding to series creator Tim Kring and his brain trust for even making the slightest effort in Monday’s episode to convince us that you’d kill off Peter (Milo Ventimiglia), whose secret power is to absorb the secret powers of others. To paraphrase one of the show’s many season-one catch phrases, Eliminate Milo, Eliminate Your Entire Teenage Girl Viewership.

And that’s particularly relevant, given how the show has evolved into a particularly startling parable of teen angst, of that moment in every kid’s life when he or she discovers that Mom and/or Dad isn’t the hero one wholeheartedly believed them to be.

This has been unusually resonant in the character of indestructible cheerleader Claire (Hayden Panettiere), who came to the realization of just how sinister her father, conspiracy bagman HRG (Jack Coleman), was in terms of his job of rounding up those, like herself, with special super powers (now, he may have flipped to the side of good – or has he?). Tonight, she met, for the first meaningful time, her biological father, politician-who-can-soar-with-the-eagles Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), who also seems to be on the verge of flipping, but in his case, it would be from good to evil.

Nathan met with Linderman (Malcolm McDowell), a seemingly sinister Vegas power broker who seems to have a special ability himself, but fears that mankind may at this point be irredeemable, and that the nuclear explosion flattening Manhattan in Isaac’s (Santiago Cabrera) painting of the future represents “a brighter future.”

“This tragedy will be a catalyst for good,” Linderman suggests to Nathan, in that it could inspire “a united sense of hope couched in a united sense of fear.” (Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to “Heroes”’ baldest 9/11 metaphor.) Nathan, Liinderman promises/warns, could be the charismatic leader who emerges unscathed from the catastrophe.

(Interestingly, “Heroes” has veered into obfuscating territory that longtime fans of “24” have been expecting from their favorite whacked-out serial: What if the world was turned upside-down, and wrong became right and vice-versa? That particularly came into play on fan message boards last year, when the President of the United States was revealed to be in league with the terrorists – wait, a few timorous souls offered; what if the President really is acting in the national interest and in reality we should be rooting against Jack Bauer? Of course, we all know by now that we should never root against Jack Bauer, but “Heroes” has done yeoman-like work in muddying its waters in separating good guys and bad guys, to the extent that we’re not quite positive where our allegiances should lie. In fact, the show’s new catch phrase buys into the possibility of failure and next week’s episode takes place five years in the future, examining what might happen were our heroes not able to save the world.)

Back on point: HRG/Nathan aren’t the only parents flirting with the dark side. Ali Larter’s dueling dual personalities, Jessica and Niki, are battling, badly, over the fate of her/their son Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey). Time/space continuum-breaker Hiro’s (Masi Oka) father (George Takei) was recently introduced as an early player in whatever sort of conspiracy may be unfolding. And Nathan and Peter’s mother (Cristine Rose) was revealed on Monday to know a bit too much about whatever’s going on to make you feel too comfy to be in her presence.

All these parents, all these secrets and lies – were I a kid addictively watching this show, I’d have trouble sleeping on Monday nights, wondering what sinister plots were being launched down the hallway in my parents’ bedroom. It makes you wonder: What did Christina Crawford’s secret power end up being? Besides, of course, being able to cash in on being Joanna Crawford's daughter?

Meanwhile, self-appointed hero wrangler Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) proceeds apace as TV’s most hapless intellectual, continuously blithering into the worst of the bad guys. Isaac bought the farm, but not before outright telling evil super-powers-vacuum Sylar (Zachary Quinto) he figured out a way to stop him, a tell that Sylar seemed to outright ignore. Mind-reading doofus Parkman (Greg Grunberg) continues to establish himself as Hero Least Deserving of/Capable of Capitalizing Fully on His Abilities.

And how stupid did they think HRG was, anyway? After busting him with Candice’s (Missy Peregrym – doesn’t the actress’s name sound more like a character’s name than her actual character’s? Doesn’t “Missy Peregrym” sound like something out of Dickens?) shape-shifting abilities at the end of the previous episode, did they really think he’d fall for it again so quickly?

And Hiro met his soul-patched doppelganger from the future, which promises a really cool swordfight in a future episode or a lot of turgid plot explication during which the show’s next catch phrase will emerge.

Honestly: Imagine that you’ve never seen an episode of the show and read the above synopsis/commentary again. Wouldn’t you lobby hard to have that person committed?