Does the Miss America (7 p.m. today, TLC) pageant still matter? After a monthlong boot camp captured in the “Miss America: Reality Check” series, the contestants have been subjected to an online popularity test, and home viewers got to decide the 16 finalists.

Did the “Reality Check” process work? Will our finalists seem more real and less plastic and pageant-y? And is that what viewers want? Or, more to the point, is that what people who still care about pageants want? Will the reality gimmick make the old-fashioned contest seem more relevant? Or will it turn off those who turn to these spectacles for glitz, glamour and escapism?

¢ Jack (John Barrowman) returns as the popular British sci-fi import “Torchwood” (8 p.m. today, BBC America) enters its second season. This tale of alien invaders, intergalactic technology and intrigue has become the most popular series in the network’s history.

¢ Cartoon characters never age. For most two-dimensional characters, this does not present a problem. The kids in “The Family Circus” may be old enough to collect Social Security, but they are forever frozen in a pre-kindergarten innocence, circa 1957. But for a cartoon like “The Simpsons” (7 p.m. Sunday, Fox), where pop culture and even political references are essential to the understanding of the characters, this can get tricky.

Way back in the early 1990s, when the show was new, Homer’s back story included a 1974 high school prom with a “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” theme, a reference to the Elton John album.

Years later, Homer was said to have spent time in a barbershop quartet (whose career trajectory followed that of the Beatles) that became a one-hit wonder with the song “Baby on Board,” a nod to the ubiquitous plastic tags hung from minivan windows of proud yuppie parents during the mid-1980s.

Tonight, “The Simpsons” updates Homer’s pop-culture past into another decade with a story about how a college-aged Homer invented grunge, the neopunk sound of the early 1990s, popularized by Nirvana and other bands.

But how can you depict a character marinated in the pop culture of the early 1990s and not refer to one of the biggest fads of that era? Will “The Simpsons” now show scenes of the Simpsons watching “The Simpsons”?

Tonight’s highlights

¢ “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials 2008” (7 p.m., CBS) celebrates advertising.

¢ Sailors find a haunted tanker in the 2008 shocker “Ghost Voyage” (8 p.m., Sci Fi).

¢ “Christina Aguilera: Back to Basics” (9 p.m., VH1) captures the singer on tour in Australia.

Sunday’s highlights

¢ Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (6 p.m., CBS): the subprime mortgage meltdown and its repercussions; an interview with the man who interrogated Saddam Hussein.

¢ Actors honor actors at the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (7 p.m., TNT and TBS).

¢ A murder attempt on Sebastian takes his friend’s life on “Shark” (7 p.m., CBS).

¢ Billie Piper (“Doctor Who”) stars in the “Masterpiece Theatre” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Mansfield Park.”

¢ The paper can’t confirm a shocker from City Hall on “The Wire” (8 p.m., HBO).

¢ Walt has a lot of cleaning up to do on “Breaking Bad” (9 p.m., AMC).

¢ An agent (James Remar) must stop a potential terrorist in the 2007 thriller “Sharpshooter” (9 p.m., Spike).