Warner Brothers announced this week that they’re launching theWB.com. The website will be the premiere destination for free, streaming, WB content. This includes everything from old favorites like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, and Smallville to shows Warner Brother’s had their hand in like Friends and The OC. The website will also feature older programs (The Jetsons, Gilligan’s Island) and brand new WB content created especially for the online venture.

Why is this such big news? It gives some of these shows a brand new forum and a chance to garner new fans. I am a TV fanatic but I never caught wind of Veronica Mars or Everwood. Now, I, and millions of others will have the opportunity to do just that, and for free.

Initiatives like iTunes, Hulu (a website featuring free Universal and Fox television shows and films), and TheWb.com, not only gives these programs a second chance, but they’re changing the way we conceptualize and watch television.

TV is not something you ogle after dinner time anymore. You can watch it on your phone while you ride the bus to work, you can watch it on your laptop when you get to work or you can record your favorite shows and watch them whenever and however you want. It’s a fascinating shift to watch and websites like this are at the vanguard of this movement.

So be on the lookout for theWB.com, not only to catch up on those old episodes of One Tree Hill, but to catch technological history in the making. And if nothing else, these old promos should get you excited.

Here’s hoping they bring back Jack and Jill.

Strong women are hard to find – at least, they are in movies and TV. The roles offered to women in mainstream entertainment tend to fall into an alarmingly narrow range: victim, wet dream, and killer bitch, with a long-suffering wife or girlfriend thrown occasionally into the mix. These parts are not only far from aspirational, they have little or nothing to do with the realities of the women who watch them.

Now, here’s the good news. Though they’re not easy to come by, great female characters do exist: tough, smart, funny, complicated women, who give normal girls something to shoot for, or at least allow us to indulge in some quality couch time without sacrificing our souls to the dark altar of the Chick Flick.

Here, a roundup of recent favorites.

4. Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars

Veronica Mars – the sharp, sarcastic teen detective at the center of the WB’s much-beloved (and cancelled) series by the same name – triumphed over her show’s painfully cute premise to become one of the best female characters in recent years, due in large part to a fantastic performance by Kristin Bell. The writing didn’t hurt, either; Veronica worked several startlingly dark cases, including her own date rape, but she was never portrayed as a victim, and the show’s witty, self-aware dialogue kept it from dissolving into melodrama. Read More »

I was just rewatching an episode of Veronica Mars (which, if you don’t know, is my favorite show) that featured the fine acting stylings of one Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or JTT to those in the know. Needless to say, he hasn’t aged well. He’s not quite a Fred Savage but he is by no means a Jerry O’ Connell.In his episode of VM, he is sporting this strange post-apocalyptic lost in the cement jungle half-mullet that really sort of traumatized me.

This sad encounter made me want to remember a happier time in the mid-nineties when JTT was all dimples and dreams and, of course, my heart’s most fervent desire. Read More »

5. Monica Bellucci
If you have seen this woman, then I really don’t need to explain myself. In her mid-forties, she could kick almost any ingenue’s boney little ass with the sheer force of her heavy-lidded sexuality. She could probably snap Keira Knightley in half with a glance.

4. Kristen Bell

Usually I like my women with a little more meat on them, but Bell is just so damn cute and sassy that I can make an exception. She’s a master of comic timing, a self proclaimed “nerd”, and was named one of the world’s sexiest vegetarians in 2006. Also, Veronica Mars. Read More »

I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that my liking a show is essentially its kiss of death (so I hope no one is getting too deeply in to Gossip Girl, ‘cause I love those rich bitches). As soon as I really get into a show, it either gets canceled or goes the way of the Hindenburg, quality wise.

In middle school (okay, high school) I started watching Dawson’s Creek around the beginning of the fourth season when Pacey and Joey got together. They had such chemistry and Joshua Jackson was such a sexy little cupcake of a man.

Then, as if the WB knew that I was enjoying the storyline, Pacey and Joey broke up and Joey went off to boring college, got a boring roommate and dated a boring, creepy professor. And, worst of all, Pacey got a goatee.

Anyway, don’t get me started on Carnivale, My So-Called Life, Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, Buffy and Daria. All amazing shows that caught wind that I was ardently watching and loving and got almost immediately canceled or started sucking (the sucking part is, of course, highly subjective, but did anyone really enjoy whiny little sister Dawn? or Tom, the ruiner of one of the best friendships in TV history?)

The one that hurts the most, however, is Veronica Mars. I watched the first two, transcendently awesome seasons on DVD right before the third season premiered on the new CW network. I had never seen a female character quite like Veronica: so smart, so witty, so kick-ass, sassy, no nonsense, flawed, complex–she was pretty much my hero on celluloid. It was, without question, my very favorite show and I Could. Not. Wait for season three. Read More »

Getting fashion inspiration from TV and movies is nothing new. I can remember riding my bike around my neighborhood during the summer after fourth grade, dressed just like the girls from Now and Then singing “Knock Three Times.”

Of course, there wasn’t a boy who looked like Devon Sawa and no mystery to solve, but if there had been… well, I totally looked the part.

Emulating a star’s style is easier than ever and with Starbrand and the CW Style Shop, all your favorite TV looks are only a click away. And what better time to try out someone else’s look than in college, when you haven’t quite figured out who the hell you are?

With these online TV looks categorized by brand, episode and character, your favorite pieces are easy to find. And best of all, no arduous searching through website after website looking for a really awesome pair of jeans. All the denim in these shops is to the minute.

They have also made it easy to shop for cute basics and affordable outerwear. It’s like having a whole rack of awesome clothes pulled from every different virtual store.

They’ve already done all the work, and for a lazy college girl, these websites are ideal. Work is a word we tend to avoid at all costs. I mean who hasn’t worn their pj’s to class at least once?

Check out the fall fashion gallery after the jump! Read More »