Justified Idiocy

Amidst all the writing, acting, and directing brilliance on display in the FX series Justified (2010-2015) lies a considerable amount of idiocy.

The entire show might be regarded as nothing more than a vehicle for delivering violence — including creative forms of torture — to the screen, so much so it seems like a fetish of the writers. 

The endless standoffs, like something out of a cheap Western, are made no better by the silly patter — generally enumerating alternatives for how things will turn out depending on what the bad guys do.

As Eli Wallach's character Tuco classically said in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966), "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."

Precisely.

But far and away the worst idiocy of the Justified series is the main purpose of so many of these standoffs: trying to determine where somebody is. 

1. Isn't it the job of the U.S. Marshal Service to find people? to always know where they are?
2. What about using tracking technology — e.g., GPS, smartphones, other devices.
3. How does anyone know where another person is without following or tracking him?

As the always interesting Wynn Duffy says at one point, when somebody accuses him of giving a false location for somebody else, "I told you where I saw him last, not where he is now."

Exactly.

But then, if the good guys only spent as much time tailing and locating evildoers themselves, we wouldn't have so many intensely fascinating standoffs.