For all their hype, the Ultra Guardians are laughably bad at their jobs
The only time they were even remotely competent was when they helped prevent what was essentially a rocket taking off from causing collateral damage
1. I think its more questionable why everyone is freaking out when the Ultra Guardians seem to be dealing with things easily.
2. I disagree I think the two ultra beast capture (One being Xurkitree) was pretty competent because what they did was the only way to capture them. But what's this you have a complaint about it?
Everything else was "stand around gesticulating until someone remembers there's an Ultra Beast in the vicinity" where it's then promptly caught and sent home with zero fanfare
Friendly reminder that they waited until night to actually do anything about Xurkitree and Burst
Looker and Anabel would be so disappointed in them
Yeah that's not what happened at all, it may have taken a long time to deal with it, but that wasn't the ultra guardians fault, they literally couldn't do anything, they tried catching them but the performance prevented their capture. The moment they could act their plan took place at nighet, if dusk lasts a long period of time, that's not the Ultra Guardians fault that's the animator's (writer's director's) fault.
Likewise with the other scene, because if I'm right when Blacephalon showed up it was normally day and then when it came back on it was dusk time, again primarily the fault of the animator as well as the director (writer) of the episode, who decided it would make more sense to distract the ultra beasts at night time, because literally they were forcing that situation because fireworks are best scene at night, hence why they the non characters waited until the night before allowing the characters to act.
And also the reason why they may have took so long to try and do anything, is, well what do you expect?
You're suggesting is that they act without thinking in regards to a Pokemon they literally don't know anything about but they're not competent because they didn't act swiftly and accordingly? In what way? It's not like these are elite four level trainers, and these Ultra Beasts are pretty strong, its been pretty clear that these ultra beasts just cannot be caught by brute Pokemon battling, and as such that's what happened in this episode.
Could an Elite Four member or a champion handle the ultra beasts a lot better, yes because they have strength on their side. The ultra guardians don't exactly have the strongest Pokemon, and attacking them would not have been a competent move because it wasn't just ONE ultra beasts it was two. And having TWO ultra beasts targeting you and actually attacking you isn't smart and it sure as heck isn't competent. They had to think of a way to deal with them trying to outperform each other rather than attack attack and then be attacked.
Yeah it took until night but that was clearly simply because "bright" performances are only best during night, not because they were standing there like idiots but because the PLOT was forcing them to wait, on top of the whole speeding time just so it could be night. Anime, cartoons, movies, they are going to take liberties. Even if it took 12 hours for dusk to turn into night (in an extremely exaggerated example), they'll still end up doing it a few minutes because "PLOT" although with live action movies they might just do time compression.