Riggs is capable in small doses but the producers asked too much of him tonight. His monologue to his unconscious father felt like a high school play audition.
That's a great way to describe Carl's over acting.
Meh. A lot of Trek fans were very forgiving of Avery Brooks grotesque overacting in the first couple seasons of DS9 - and Carl's poor acting didn't even come close to his.
It wasn't all on Riggs. The writers made it a little too delivered of a speech. Not something a kid as green as him is going to be able to make fully natural sounding. It wasn't terrible, just a tiny bit transparent. I shouldn't end up consciously stopping to notice someone's monologue, because it takes you out of the moment a bit, & that's what happened, but it didn't ruin the episode by any means
I'm also a bit disappointed that there was no regroup plan at all. Crisis planning is almost a no brainer in this world, and after their issues with the Governor, the first time, this counsel they had built should certainly have put together a regroup plan for any potential cause for evacuation
Did they really think there'd
never be cause for an evacuation? A fire, an earthquake, a hurricane, raiders, a mass herd. Hell, a plain old modern family has an evacuation plan for their household these days, & that's usually for less than half a dozen people. This was a community of dozens living in a prison, after the end of civilization, & now they're just scattered to the wind. If Michonne hadn't spotted decidedly normal human footprints, they'd never have even found each other at all
All they really needed was a couple spots. We escape to here, & rendezvous there, etc... I suppose dramatically, it was too easy for them to do that. We'd have no "Isolation anxiety" to play off of, like they did with Michonne this week, because ultimately it's not the prison that made them safe, it was the group
In any believable context, they would know that, & would never want to be separated from it for long. Groups do things together, including plan for how to move the group if need be