As far as the issue of Lexington being several hours from Harlan - this is common to a lot of shows with spread-out locales. Smallville, for instance - in the early episodes, the town of Smallville was halfway across Kansas from Metropolis, when it was important for the two places to be separate. By the sixth season, when the stories required a lot of movement by non-superpowered types without access to helicopters, the writers started moving Smallville eastward, until it was basically a bedroom community outer suburb of the big city.

Time and space has no dominion over the requirements of a writing staff on a weekly serial deadline.