This scene in Boom Town shows The Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey sat sharing presumably lunch together. This is the only episode where we see this team of four and one of the only scenes where they get to just sit together and be themselves.
The important context for this scene is that Jack is telling a story of one of his adventures and Mickey delivers the punchline that makes them all crack up.
Despite having only just met Jack and been immediately jealous of him, Mickey is clearly engaged and loving the story. Visually we can see any tension between the two men has immediately resolved. This makes Jack come across as charismatic and likeable since tension between Mickey and the other two, one way or another, has almost always been present. Mickey struggles to even pretend to be interested in Rose’s stories from the TARDIS later, just feeling left out. He‘s so engaged in Jack’s story, that he actually finishes it for him - no doubt the most part of the group he’s felt all season.
Interestingly Jack and Rose are sat on one side, with the Doctor and Mickey together on the other. Jack’s closeness to Rose is literally pitted against both of the other men. It’s this episode Mickey realises he will never be the one for Rose - it’s not just the Doctor she’s choose over him, it’s Jack.
The Doctor also feels the need to bring Jack down a peg in front of Rose by reminding him who’s in charge, despite agreeing with the plan Jack came up with. Then he abandons Jack on Satellite 5 two episodes later.
The Doctor and Mickey have never felt down united, sharing the joke with each other in a moment of genuine friendship. This shows how their relationship (secretly) grew in World War Three, but also perhaps by meeting Jack, the Doctor now knows how Mickey feels a little better.
it’s a psychological fact that when you laugh in a group, you look at who you’re most comfortable with. It’s telling, who each of them looks at.
Mickey immediately turns to the Doctor. The Doctor knows and accepts him from World War Three and his fear of their adventures. Their relationship, while mocking and antagonistic, hides a genuine friendship and Mickey is comfortable with him. He’s only just met Jack, but he’s known Rose almost all his life. This isn’t his Rose anymore though. This is a time traveller who uses him when she needs him but will never see him as anything more than a coward and an idiot anymore.
Jack’s start on Mickey as he finishes the joke, then quickly move to the Doctor and keep going as he turns to look at Rose. It could be interpreted as him trying to look at any of the three first. Perhaps he’s comfortable with Mickey because he can never really be part of the other two’s world and he knows it. Perhaps he’s glancing to the Doctor as the only one there anything like him, and moving on quickly to hide that. Or perhaps Rose as the first one he met and a girl he’s latched onto is where he wants to look.
Jack could be the Everyman fitting in anywhere and genuinely equally comfortable with all 3. Or it could be his con man history showing as he makes them all feel like the one he looks at while actually focusing on none.
I think he’s taking them all in, as the first family he’s felt part of since he got kicked out of the time agency, or perhaps even since he lost his brother as a child. He feels so attached to this unit he spends centuries of his life trying to find them again during Torchwood (tragically only to find Rose and Mickey gone, and that the Doctor deliberately left him behind. The Torchwood team turns out to be his new family (until they pretty much all die too - eek!)).
The Doctor looks at Mickey first as he finishes the punchline but his instinct is to look away. He focuses on a newspaper on another table instead. This domestic family normality is totally alien to him. The Doctor probably hasn’t sat and ate lunch with friends since well before the Time War.
Rose is perhaps most interesting because she looks up and then at Jack. Looking at Jack is a deliberate choice to avoid choosing between the Doctor and Mickey (at least in front of them). Looking up at the ceiling was her instinct. She has become just like the Doctor - unable to sit still and be part of a moment. Just like the Doctor she has to keep running from one adventure to the next. Clara later calls it an addiction, and this applies to Rose more than perhaps any other companion.
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