"Have You Got Good Religion?"

Dog was looking for some no-account scofflaw and as usual he arrived too late to deal with anybody but the usual: some bumbling, halfwit, crooked uncle or father or stepfather or "gramps" (or "a sort of family friend"). The uncle (father) (gramps), naturally, swore that he didn't know where his nephew (or son) (or grandson) was. Dog respectfully called him a liar to his face and blustered deeper into the building. He hollered imperiously those immortal words, "Leland–– check the crawlspaces and under the bed."

By the way, these meth addicts always keep such messy places. You'd think they had no gumption! They should do a show about it. "Flip This Crack Den."

So Nuncy Grampy was playing his apportioned role (i.e., "too stupid to dissemble") ("too stupid even to fool Dog"), and he said, "I swear I don't know where he is. We don't even talk. Bring me a Bible and I'll swear on it."
Dog turned quickly and retorted tartly, "A meaningless remark! Who here can vouch for your good ties with your diocese? Who here can speak for your personal commitment to the Shavvat? Who shall attest to thy Christianly reception of Election and Grace? Who among ye can tell me if ye bathed in the blood of the Lamb? Have you got good religion?"
He then began to croon "Dem Golden Slippers."

No, none of that happened. The man made the remark about the Bible but Dog didn't even bother to respond.

They found the nephew/grandson/son in due course. I'd like to say they did so by canny sleuthmanship and excellent deduction but would you even believe me if I did?

Perp he had a fat estranged wife (of course) and while she sat blubbing to Dog and Beth hubbins was in the building next door frolicking and doing heroin with some nubile young drug addict a quarter his age. Strange how people live. He had his wife in the palm of his hand! He had his cake and he ate it too! I looked at this drug addict in his crack den with naked envy. As Joe Fagin sagely says, "That's Living Alright!"

When Dog burst into his secret crack-den love-nest, the guy was swooning on his feet. Half-dead on his feet he was withal full of junkie bravado. He rolled his eyes and bragged to Dog, "If you hadn't of surprised me like that I was gonna commit suicide by cop!"

Dog gave that all the credibility it deserved. He said, "I'd been knocking on your door for half an hour you nincompoop."

No –– he didn't. But she should of.

He should of said, "Suicide by cop? Brah, you ain't suicidal and I sure ain't no cop!"

I really ought to write some scripts out for this show. It'd be much better if I did.

Just a suggestion to the good people at Country Music Television.

At the end they had the usual Asterix-like banquet scene where they all dress up with the local bounty-hunter dynasties and they go to  Denny's or a Red Lobster or an Olive Garden and they prate platitudes at each other. Cacofonix in a corner tied up. This time somebody remarked plaintively, "What are our grandchildren's future?"

Never mind the essence and substance of the question, I stared at the TV for a few minutes trying to parse the sentence, see if it could conceivably have made sense.

Never mind I missed the answer to the riddle: that our grandchildrens' future "are" bounty-hunting.

This conclusion was almost as chilling as that episode of Parking Wars where the guy who tows illegally parked cars away in his truck went to his infant son's kindergarten and weirdly talked to his pre-school son through the wire fence. At the end of it he turned with a gruesome leer and said to the cameraman, "When he grows up he's gonna be like his old Dad –– a tow-truck car-remover!"

The child visibly blanched.