S.F. Chronicle Review of ‘Jersey Strong’

TV Review: ‘Jersey’ Makes a Strong Case for Reality TV on Pivot
By David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle

“Jersey Strong” is a terrific show if, like me, you think most reality shows are idiotic and smell like they’re scripted. Actually, even if you aren’t a cynic about the sub-genre (emphasis on “sub”), it’s a good show.

Pivot TV, the new Participant Media TV outlet, calls “Jersey Strong” a “docu-soap,” which, if it had the work “shark” in it, might sound like something the SyFy channel would dream up. I don’t know about the soap part, but a high level of credibility earns “Jersey Strong” the right to be called documentary TV.

The show focuses on two young women in Newark, N.J., who are trying to make better lives for themselves and for others in the hardscrabble city.

Jayda admits she was a “badass” in her younger days, but thanks to a tough-love intervention by her attorney when she was on trial for robbery, she turned her life around and now actively mentors other young women to keep them from making mistakes in their lives.

That attorney was Brooke Barnett, who is just as fierce as she battles to help her clients, who don’t have the resources to hire high-powered lawyers.

In the first episode, we meet Jayda’s boyfriend, Creep, with whom she has a young daughter. She also has a son, Aljahmeir, who is 8 going on 28 and announced that, in school, he’s chosen academics over popularity and that he wants to be a surgeon when he grows up. Not just a doctor, he insists– a surgeon.