Well, I thought Coral’s acting wasn’t awful, he wasn’t too overly dramatic for the most part. I also think it was a good thing that they kept the focus on him and not Rick, because Lincoln plays a pretty good mean Rick, and a decidedly awful sad Rick. So, all in all, it was OK for what it was. It was overdone in terms of length, but at least it wasn’t overly B-movie level hammy.
The interesting things, I guess, at least in terms of the story, were from the Rick dreams, mainly a) the old man Rick dreams were Carl’s dreams, not Rick’s, b) The child in the dream was Judith, not Gracie as had been speculated online, and c) Negan was in it at the end, which was hammy. However, the others in the dream, as far as I could tell, were Rick, Michonne, Judith, Eugene, Jerry, and Siddiq. That leaves the door open for anyone else to die (Carol, Darryl, Rosita, Tara, Aaron, Enid, Eze-E, Maggie) if the dream is to be believed. The lame-osity of this is the fact that they will use the “I will make the dream real!” to justify Rick not killing Negan when he gets the chance, which is horribly weak and terribly lame, at best. I get what they are trying to do, but you can only suspend disbelief so far, and believing that Rick is just going to let Negin live is beyond anything I can swallow, no matter what the fuck he remembers about what his kid said.
The rest was more or less Rambo shit as usual, of course they pour it on thick with the kid killing the douchenozzle that ran the crew that killed his brother. If this show is trying to be complex and set up scenarios of moral ambiguity, it would help if there was any, read: ANY, sympathy possible for the people they are trying to do so with. But they have done this again and again, whether it’s this fuckstick or Negin or Gareth or the Governor or Gregory, the entire moral equivalence falls flat on its tits when the other people have zero redeeming qualities.