Our love-hate relationship with Hollywood runs deep and gets weirder every day. Of course we’re appalled by the behavior of underfed starlets and underdressed divas. So how come we can’t stop buying magazines and watching tabloid TV shows describing their every transgression?

Of course, one of the reasons for our complicated obsession with the entertainment capital could be envy. It seems like half the country wants to make it in Hollywood and the other half is rooting for them to fail. Why else would TV keep churning out shows like “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC)?

The abject failure of the series “On the Lot” (7 p.m., Fox) speaks volumes about our ambivalence toward those who would strive for Hollywood Babylon. Modeled on “American Idol” and produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, “Lot” should have had a lot going for it. But all the show proved is how much people don’t care about the sausage-making process of film production.

“On the Lot” is not all that different from the mediocre HBO and Bravo series “Project Greenlight,” co-created by Ben Affleck, a one-time outsider turned Hollywood insider. America embraced him in “Good Will Hunting” and jeered him during his “Gigli”/Bennifer days. It seems that once inside the gilded gates of the Hollywood-celebrity citadel, it’s hard to seem sympathetic to those with their noses pressed up against the glass.

“Entourage,” another HBO series, attempts to walk that fine line. Is it a show about goofball buddies from Queens, N.Y.? Or a satire of Hollywood mores? Like most things Hollywood, “Entourage” generates buzz, but its audience is comparatively small.

¢ “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List” (9 p.m., Bravo) deserves a prize for its host’s brilliant negotiation of her inside-outside Hollywood status. Griffin enters season three with a few changes. Her marriage, teetering on the brink last year, is officially over. And she seems genuinely hurt about its failure.

But in true show-must-go-on fashion, Griffin rallies to perform at venues both famous and pedestrian. In tonight’s series premiere, she appears in an industrial video for a hair-care product company and plays Carnegie Hall.

In a Griffin comedy special (8 p.m., Bravo) featuring a title unsuitable for a family newspaper, she recalls run-ins, pleasant and unpleasant, with Lindsay Lohan.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ The British espionage series “MI-5” (7 p.m., BBC America) returns to cable.

¢ A mission from the president (William H. Macy) on “The Unit” (8 p.m., CBS).

¢ An obese patient challenges the obvious on “House” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ Eva Longoria hosts the 2007 ALMA Awards (8 p.m., ABC).

¢ Winter turns rough on “Deadliest Catch” (8 p.m., Discovery).

¢ Scheduled on “48 Hours Mystery” (9 p.m., CBS): Murder exposes suburban secrets.

¢ The illusionist series “Criss Angel Mindfreak” (9 p.m., A&E) enters its third season.