Van Alden. Obviously, his career as a prohi is over. Since I can't see him becoming a bootlegger, that probably means the end of the line for him on this show. Van Alden was nuts in the first season, but has lost his grip completely. Interesting how he denied any emotion when describing his past impression of Margaret.
I also found it quite interesting that the gangsters really acted like gangsters in this episode - bonding together, screwing over their partners, and laughing off what has happened. Capone and Luciano are two of a kind, and Mickey and Jimmy don't really count after all. Al's slaps on Mickey were a serious warning that Doyle should just take being screwed and shut up if he knows what's good for him. But I was somewhat litttle surprised that Capone took this whole incident so lightly as I thought he had some sort of bond with Jimmy.
Margaret's Catholic guilt might be realistic, but it is not very interesting or dramatically satisfying. Quite boring, actually, since it's the exact same dilemma that she faced in Season 1 and resolved by throwing her lot in with Nucky in the finale.
Manny is a brutal idiot and a goner. I mean, letting Doyle live?
Oh Gillian. It looked to me like she went to Princeton to ruin Jimmy's time there, and so she did. She had said to him "you've already changed so much" or something like that--signalling that she didn't like him becoming part of a world she had no knowledge of. So she went and messed with him. If I found her icky before, this episode made me full-on detest her. She is a cruel, abusive parent and now we really know why Jimmy seems such a deeply sad, damaged person, who seems only to truly connect with another deeply sad, damaged person (Richard). I agree that all that backstory was necessary to explain why he joined the army--and what exactly he was running away from. I personally like the classic Oedipal arc of his story.
