One of the uglier truths in life and one largely unexplored on television is that some adult children just don’t like their parents. And all too often, the feelings are mutual. The abrasive quipping between Charlie Sheen and Holland Taylor on “Two and a Half Men” (8 p.m., CBS) barely masks the show’s theme that the two characters seem tethered together for life through completely contrived bonds of nonaffection.

Perhaps the most idealized relationship between adult child and parent was found on “Frasier,” the series that “Two and a Half Men” clearly imitates, without a fraction of the wit.

Leave it to reality television to bring us generational battle without the script-driven bromides. I have a hard time imagining Paul Sr. from “American Choppers” (8 p.m., Discovery) ruminating on Shakespeare’s words from “King Lear”: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, to have a thankless child!” So the muscle-bound motorcyclist expresses himself through lawyers. In tonight’s “Chopper” soap opera, he serves his son and namesake with a second lawsuit.

Meanwhile, both Teutuls unveil new bike designs. Senior’s creation takes him to New York while Junior travels all the way to Florida with his secret project. Perhaps he should stay down there. Most sane people who can’t stand their parents tend to relocate. It’s a big country. And while Shakespeare may not have written it, there is some truth to the old saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

l “American Experience” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) presents “Panama Canal,” a 90-minute film about the massive engineering project completed in 1914. The opening of the canal announced to the world that the United States was the preeminent industrial power in the world, a nation capable of eradicating disease, toppling inconvenient governments, and quite literally changing the face of the Earth.

“Canal” takes a warts-and-all look at this titanic achievement, exploring the misgivings that many of President Theodore Roosevelt’s contemporaries had about our role in creating the nation of Panama just to wrest control of the canal zone from Colombia. It also explores the era’s fixed ideas on race and reflects on the prevailing attitude of the time that nature was a force to be mastered by men, particularly the men who felt it was their destiny to rule the world.

Tonight’s other highlights

• A kick in the boot camp on “House” (7 p.m., Fox).

• Fourteen lovelies remain in the house on “The Bachelor” (7 p.m., ABC). One of them sports a black eye and can’t say how she got it.

• Scales tipped on “The Cape” (8 p.m., NBC).

• A mother becomes a suspect in the abduction of her own child on “Lie to Me” (8 p.m., Fox).

• Sally’s sad story unfolds on “Being Human” (9 p.m., SyFy).

• A floating museum hosts a hostage crisis on “Hawaii Five-O” (9 p.m., CBS,).

• Harry defends an elderly woman who steals to survive on “Harry’s Law” (9 p.m., NBC).

• A kiss is just a kiss on “Castle” (9 p.m., ABC).

• No sympathy for Tea on “Skins” (9 p.m., MTV).