Two TLC shows join forces as the Teutels from “American Choppers” (7 p.m., TLC) visit the Gosselins on “Jon & Kate Plus 8” (8 p.m., TLC).

As anyone who strolls past a weekly tabloid knows, the Gosselins’ marital woes have become front-page stuff. We live in very dull times.

As reality television fixtures, the Gosselins remind me a little of the Louds, the subject of “An American Family,” the pioneering 1973 documentary about a large California brood. It didn’t take long for the presence of a camera crew to change the Loud family dynamic, and parents Pat and Bill Loud announced their divorce before the end of the project.

Jon and Kate’s relationship with the camera also appears to have been a Faustian bargain. As Kate has spent more time on-air, she has become more media savvy and image conscious. Gone are the days of looking like a harried mom in a sweatshirt — the pitiable, barely coping image that probably attracted an audience of mothers to the show.

Now Kate performs like a TV talking head in training, sporting an expensive hairdo, snapping at her husband, bossing around underlings and micro-managing piñata placement at birthday parties. Any shred of relatable mom-dom has been replaced by brittle media savvy. She has become the brand.

Husband Jon has taken another route. He speaks with a calm, almost sedated detachment. It’s easy to see how this dude routine has driven his wife crazy. “Whatever” is not the word women want to hear when there are eight kids to raise.

It takes a callous gall for Jon to go on a snowboarding vacation on his wife’s birthday, but it takes monumental cluelessness to do it on camera for all the world to see.

For all of their foibles, it’s impossible not to feel compassion for them both. Everything about their experience has been excessive — the pharmaceutically enhanced pregnancy, the multiple births, the medical miracle, the staggering bills, the invasion of privacy and the surprising celebrity.

And more extreme still, it never ends. A “Survivor” or “Big Brother” contestant remains in the spotlight for a few months. This has endured for five years.

To call the Gosselins’ fate a very private hell would be both cliche and untrue. There’s nothing private about it. And that’s what makes it so fascinating to so many and so much like an ongoing act of public torture. Many have voiced concerns about the exploitation of the Gosselin children, but perhaps it’s also time to worry about the sanity of these adults.

This has become a real-life version of “The Truman Show.” And for the Gosselins, there doesn’t seem to be any pleasant way to end the movie.

• Mixing sports and celebrity, stats and gossip, the new talk show “Joe Buck Live” (8 p.m., HBO) will appear quarterly.

Tonight’s other highlights

• Cassie feels unhinged on “Greek” (7 p.m., Family).

• A Christmas pageant leaves a teen very ill on “House” (7 p.m., Fox).

• A crooked tycoon’s kidnapping seems fishy on “The Closer” (8 p.m., TNT).

• A construction accident leaves two trapped on “CSI: Miami” (9 p.m., CBS).

• Chris Hansen trolls for Vegas vice on “Dateline” (9 p.m., NBC).

• Jackie’s sugar substitute has dire repercussions on “Nurse Jackie” (9:30 p.m., Showtime).