All we want for Christmas is for our favorite Joss Whedon shows to stop getting cancelled.

Clearly Santa isn’t listening. Here are our suggestions for consoling all of your still-broken-hearted Browncoats.

1. The Psychology of Joss Whedon [shameless self-promotion]. Revisit the worlds of Joss Whedon with trained psychologists at your side in this unauthorized exploration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. Looking for other reading material on Joss properties? Check out these other Smart Pop titles: Seven Seasons of Buffy, Five Seasons of Angel, Finding Serenity, Serenity Found, and Inside Joss’ Dollhouse.
2. Buffy Cup Set. The perfect vessels from which to spread the Buffy Kool-Aid.
3. Iron Man Cufflinks. For the Iron Man or

When we posted Ed Connor’s essay “Psychology Bad” (from The Psychology of Joss Whedon) last week, I couldn’t help being impressed how prescient Ed’s essay was. He labeled neuroscience as the bad guy in Firefly and Serenity, and identified it as a major theme in Joss Whedon’s work–before Dollhouse was even a glimmer in Joss’s or Eliza Duskhu’s eye.

Here’s Ed extending the ideas in his essay to Dollhouse:

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My major thesis in this essay was that River dramatizes what it means for us to be simultaneously neural and human. Neural, in the sense that we are brains–unimaginably complex wetware computers with rich potential and tragic vulnerabilities. Human, in that we are capable of love, courage, sacrifice, and self-determination.