The Week in Gay TV: Carrie Fisher Does Some "Wishful Drinking" and Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Video Game Awards

Welcome to another edition of The Week in Gay TV, your guide to the shows battling for your attention in between hitting the “refresh” button on the “Where’ s my package?” web page.

While the viewing choices are definitely slowing down as the holiday season continues, this week still has a few new options, including Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking and Neil Patrick Harris hosting the Video Game Awards, as well as a number of holiday episodes and season finales.

The USA Network has a new special from Tom Brokaw on Friday, Bridging the Divide. A half-century after the Civil Rights Act of 1960, Brokaw takes a look at people who have encountered and battled bias, with a focus at how they’re working to mend the divisions in American society.

Remembering how Brokaw’s last book, Boom! Voices of the Sixties, was supposed to be about the cultural change brought about by the 60s, but managed to overlook major moments in gay rights history such the Stonewall  Riots, I looked at Brokaw’s special with a wary eye. However, his subjects include Charlene Strong, a woman who fought for marriage equality after a Washington hospital tried to prevent her from visiting her dying wife. So it looks like Brokaw isn't ignoring the role of GLBT people this time at least.

Meanwhile, The CW has a new Smallville as Clark has to deal with the return of Slade Wilson. Clark recruits Hawkman and Star Girl to help after Slade kidnaps Lois. My CW station was having signal troubles during Slade’s first appearance, so I’m looking forward to finally see Michael Hogan as Death Stroke — providing my cable box doesn’t have some kind of Michael Hogan curse that renders all of his Smallville episodes unwatchable.

You know why I love Supernatural? I get to write captions like "Dean stars Death in the face."

Following Smallville, Dean makes a deal with Death on a new Supernatural. Unfortunately, the deal doesn’t involve Dean playing chess in a suddenly clothesless scene. Instead, Dean agrees to take over Death’s duties for the next 24 hours. Unfortunately, while Dean is making deals to get Sam’s soul back, Sam is starting to think he likes living without a soul and is making his own deals.

On BBC America, a new Law & Order: UK looks into a case of organ trafficking after a man is attacked and his kidney stolen. Meanwhile, if you need some Friday night comedy, you might want to check out Comedy Central’s new stand-up comedy show The Benson Interruption. The show features Doug Benson as host ... and heckler.  Benson actually stays on stage as his guests perform and tries to throw off their routines. This week the guest list includes Brian Posehn from The Sarah Silverman Program, but honestly, the format is an acquired taste. My partner finds The Benson Interruption too chaotic, but there’s a camaraderie between Benson and his guests that makes it work for me.

He’s conquered the Tony and the Emmy Awards and Saturday Neil Patick Harris will be hosting Spike TV’s Video Game Awards. It’s been a few years since I checked out the VGAs — sadly, my initial impression was that it seemed created for an easy stereotype of gamers and Spike TV viewers. I hope when I tune in Saturday, I find out that’s changed over the past few years.

While video games still aren’t very gay inclusive, there are a few gay nominees to cheer. Fable III is nominated for Best Xbox 360 Game and Best RPG, Fallout: New Vegas is nominated for Best PC Game and Best RPG, while Neil Patrick Harris is nominated for his performance in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. I have a feeling Mass Effect 2 is going to take most of those awards (and, despite the cowardly lack of gay characters, it deserves it) but I’ll happily take a surprise winner.

The SyFy Channel brings some campy horror to Christmas with Ice Quake, where the melting of the Alaskan permafrost creates deadly earthquakes. This one has a guy in a Santa suit trying to outrun an earthquake, plus Roswell hunk Brendon Fehr as well as Victor Garber. To get you in the mood, the SyFy Channel is airing original movies featuring a variety of snow monsters all day.

SyFy isn’t the only cable network with a Saturday marathon as Logo revisits high school with it’s “Bad Ass High” marathon featuring gay-fave high school series Daria, Strangers with Candy and Buffy.

If you’re in the mood for some nonfiction programming, BBC America has a new Graham Norton Show with Jack Black, Justin Beiber and John Waters. I can’t wait to see what a meeting between teen idol Beiber and midnight movie director Waters looks like.  Meanwhile, VH1 Classic has another gay Behind the Music Remastered Saturday, this time revisiting the history of Green Day and its bisexual front man Billie Joe.

Saturday brings Paul Rudd as host of Saturday Night Live. The last time Rudd hosted SNL, we got an episode packed with gay jokes, for better or for worse, so it should be interesting to see how this week’s episode turns out. Finally, Danielle Fishel takes a look at the week in pop culture in a new episode of The Dish. Hopefully, Fishel will continue to re-edit reality shows to add homoerotic elements like she did last week with Mario Lopez.