Cory Booker, Jayda are extremely likable, but frenetic editing gets in the way: Brick City

Second episode of "Brick City" much like the first - some things I loved about it and some that troubled me (a lot). The character of Jayda, the teenage mother who's left her gang (the Bloods) and speaks to high-school girls about getting their lives on track, is emerging as the strongest character in the series, very complex and likable, and I wish the filmmakers could be a little more, or a lot more, patient and let her character emerge slowly, let us get to see her at some length. But the style of this series consists of frenetic montage and frantic editing, as if 500 hours of material must be crowded into 4 hours of documentary. No, it mustn't. Some should be left on the floor. We never spent more than a few moments at any one scene, and some of them - Jayda's breakup with her boyfriend, her reunion with the gang, her release from detention - require much more. The frenetic pace is a little more suitable for the main character, Cory Booker. He remains incredibly likable and heroic - but the film catches him in public life only. Maybe he has no private life, or maybe it was out of bounds as a precondition, but it does seem that episode 2 added nothing to our knowledge of him from episode 1. He needs to be facing some sort of crisis to give the story an arc: he is trying to lower the murder rate, so in part we're watching the city as it enters the long, hot summer, and we do see a lot of the police chief, the 3rd main character in the series, but not sure that's enough to shape the story and Booker's role gets a little murky in episode 2. It needs a single element or crisis to help crystallize the plot and to bring his character into high relief.