Something I was struck by when watching Silver Lining's playbook was the quality of the characters, even the minor supporting ones. In many films, characters can simple, one dimensional, and the audience knows how they'd react,. In Silver Lining's, every character was a person, a real person who was just on the other side of a screen, and they all served a purpose. We were surprised to hear Pat's father yelling at him over the Eagle's game when just the day before he tearfully said that he wanted more time with his son. This showed that Pat's father too had problems of his own, and put a "silver lining" on his often poor decisions.
Even Ronnie, who wasn't in the movie that much, was a quality character. The only seemingly normal person in the movie, with a marriage and a family, he was also revealed to have his own issues. Still, Ronnie was able to make the rest of the characters relate-able. Instead of the cast looking like a bunch of nuts, some with anxieties, others with a gambling problem, Ronnie bridged the gap between audience members that wouldn't relate to the other characters, and in a film that focused on mental illness, that was really cool to see.
Do any other characters have some significant worth that wasn't initially obvious?
I think you are exactly right, and I wrote about something similar. Many of the characters had more depth than it seemed at first. Many other movies will have supporting characters only serve 1 purpose, with 1 personality trait. Also, I really felt what you were talking about with Ronnie. I was frustrated at Pat for not realizing that Nikki was no longer interested in him, and he should just give her up. He refused to accept that, while the family all told him the same thing I was thinking. I could sympathize with the more "normal" characters, and it helped me relate in a movie that is hard to relate to for someone without a mental illness.
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