Bykov wrote a story, based on his hospital, colleagues and, of course, interns, only in the decorations of Imperial Russia (initially it was supposed to be their necrologies, but he got carried away and created this as result). And now he wants for them to hear this story.
In this story, Lobanov is even more aggressive and greedy; Gleb is blatantly lazy and careless; Varya is naive to the point of stupidity; and Phil... is not presented at all, because he is not irritating enough for Bykov to create something interesting based on him (and it would make little sense to include American in Imperial Russia setting, anyway). Interns acts mind-breakingly dumb: Semyon shoots nearby people with a revolver in anger; Gleb steals morphine and gets high; and Varya almost sleeps with Kupitman's STD-infected patient because she fell for his completely idiotic excuse. Bykov can't stand them and rides to Kisegach's villa, to ask her for taking them away; in his absence, interns gets drunk and set the hospital ablaze, completely destroying it. When Bykov sees this, he falls into despair and hangs himself. The end!
Unfortunately, when Bykov asks interns about their opinions, Gleb openly mocks him, Semyon doesn't even bother to pretend that he'd listened, and Varya is insulted by her portrayal as a total dumbass. This enrages Bykov enough to improvise another ending... where he survived, killed everyone and run to Alps, to fight Giuseppe Garibaldi. When this still fails to provide a reaction he wanted, now even angrier Bykov just orders the interns to leave him alone.
This episode provides examples of:
- Adaptational Dumbass: While they never were overly competent in the first place, in his story, Bykov exaggerates interns' stupidity (and other negative traits) even further:
- Lobanov is quick to explode over other guy cheating at cards, and attempts to shoot him (the second time, right in front of Bykov). After that, he tries to start selling medical leeches, despite them being available for free (and when Bykov mentions this, blatantly tells him that this doesn't matter).
- Gleb tries to just kick the patients from their ward, so he may sleep (and tells Bykov that he would do whatever he wants, since he's a son of Bykov's boss). Later he steals morphine and gets high on it to the point of running around naked.
- Varya falls for patient's sob story about him dying from a deadly illness, and now said patient has only one last wish: to have sex with a woman; Bykov saves her in time: this guy is actually Kupitman's patient, and suffers from... gonorrhoea. "Deadly illness", really?..
- When Bykov leaves the interns alone (when he attempts to ask Kisegach to take them away), they gets drunk and starts fire, which destroys the hospital. They don't even try to extinguish it.
- Adapted Out:
- Phil has no counterpart in Bykov's story, despite it being based on their hospital. Why? Because Bykov decides to simply not include him: firstly, being American, Phil would be odd out in Imperial Russia setting; and secondly, since Phil is the least irritating amongst interns, it would be boring to write about him. But when Phil hears the whole story and Bykov's treatment of the other interns, he actually thanks Bykov for not mentioning him (at the worst moment possible).
- While the story is mostly based on interns' screwups from their earlier days (particularly, the very first one), Levin (who departed just shortly before Phil's arrival) isn't present or mentioned.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: While not exactly clever by any standards when sober, either, when they gets drunk, interns causes the whole hospital to be set ablaze. The do nothing to extinguish the fire.
- Blatant Lies: One of Kupitman's patients tries to seduce Varya with the fake sob story about "deadly illness", saying that he wants to experience some love before his inevitable demise. She falls for it, not bothering to read his clinical history which states that his "deadly illness" is actually gonorrhoea.
- Brutal Honesty: Bykov's story has weird plot, caricature characters and outright non-sensical ending. When asked about their opinions, Varya only cares about it being offensive, and Lobanov doesn't care at all, as he barely listened, but Gleb straight-up asks Bykov what kind of weed he smoked while writing this, with his tone clearly telling that he's not impressed at all.
- Call-Back: This episode partially repeats the plot of the very first episode, with interns arrival to the hospital, and their first tasks to test their abilities (which they fails in hilarious ways), only without Levin... and set in Imperial Russia decorations.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal gun. In first half of the episode, Bykov took away Lobanov's pistol when he started shooting at other people. Much later he uses that same pistol to kill his interns.
- Composite Character: Varya's counterpart in Bykov's story uses certain elements of Levin's plot in the pilot, specifically, her being caught at the intimate moment (unlike Levin, she gets caught with patient rather than during attempt to "let steam out", and she gets caught by Bykov rather than Lyuba).
- Downer Ending: Bykov's story originally concluded in interns burning the hospital to the ground, and Bykov hanging himself. When he didn't like interns' reaction to it, Bykov rewrote it to him cutting off the rope and killing all interns himself.
- Driven to Suicide: Bykov's reaction to seeing his hospital being consumed by fire due to interns' Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, after initial shock, is to hang himself out of despair.
- False Reassurance: Unlike Gleb, who openly asks him whether he is high on something, Semyon actually likes Bykov's story... he fell asleep a couple of times, but otherwise he likes it.
- Flanderization: Besides dumbing interns down to near brick-stupid level, Bykov's story also exaggerates interns' negative qualities to absurd levels:
- Semyon is highly impulsive and prone to violence? Here, he is totally volatile and would put out his gun over a card game. Bykov also didn't forget about his ill-fated attempts to rise easy money in morally questionable ways: in this story, Semyon tries to sell (free!) medical leeches, and even tries to argue with Bykov that this is actually a good scheme.
- Gleb is a care-free club-goer? Here he's a junkie who gets high on morphine and starts running around naked. He also kicks the patient out of the ward so Gleb may took his bed for himself and sleep here; while still lazy, real Gleb is not that blatant.
- Back in Varya's very first day in the hospital, Kupitman had tricked her into breaching a code of conduit by pretending to be gravely ill. Bykov exaggerates it into her believing Kupitman's patient's story of "I'm dying and I don't want to die a virgin" story, and Bykov saves her at literally the last moment. While Varya is naive and too emphatic for her own good, she is not that dumb, and the "grave illness" turns out to be gonorrhoea.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: While Lobanov always was quick to explode, his counterpart in Bykov's story attempts to shoot a guy over him cheating at cards. Fortunately, he misses, and Bykov arrives in time to take away his gun; Semyon even tries to shoot a second time just before Bykov disarmed him, despite Bykov being presented right here.
- Implied Death Threat: When Bykov didn't like his interns' reaction to his story, he orders them to leave him alone, or else:Bykov: If anyone of you would bother me until the end of the day, or come with some moronic question, I swear with Chekhov, I would buy a gun, and it would fire three times!
Phil: Thank you for not mentioning me in your story!
Bykov [even angrier]: Four times!
[Phil runs away] - Naïve Newcomer: Varya falls for patient's sob story about him dying from deadly illness; he has one last wish... to have sex with a woman. Bykov and Kupitman busts them before anything could happened; which is good, since this guy is actually Kupitman's current patient, with gonorrhoea ("deadly illness", huh?).
- Naked People Are Funny: Gleb, while under morphine's effects, completely undresses and starts running around naked in erratic patterns, while Bykov tries to catch him.
- Out of Focus: Phil has no counterpart in the Bykov's story, and thus only appears in the (short) segments set in real life. Justified, cause the story is explicitly based on Bykov's negative experience with his interns, and Phil didn't cause enough problems yet to worth writing a character based on him; plus, the story is set in Imperial Russia setting, and American character would be out of place.
- Revenge via Storytelling: The whole purpose of Bykov's story is to relief some anger he feels at his interns by writing a story about how truly annoying they are. When they don't appreciate it, he rewrites the ending to make it end with them being killed by Bykov's counterpart.
- Revised Ending: In-Universe: Not liking how interns reacted to his story, Bykov changes the ending from him hanging himself to him cutting his rope with a knife, and killing his interns with a pistol he previously took away from Lobanov, and running away to the mountains, to fight Giuseppe Garibaldi. When this still fails to provide the reaction he expected, he just yells on them and orders them to leave him alone until he calms down.
- Skewed Priorities: At the end of Bykov's story, when watching the hospital being consumed by fire, while Varya at least feels some shame, and Gleb mentioned that fire looks beautiful despite everything, Semyon is only concerned that they may be forced to pay for the damage they dealt.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In Bykov's story, Gleb tries to exploit his connections to Kisegach to blatantly ignore not only his duties, but also Bykov himself.
- The Slacker: First thing Gleb does once he arrives to the hospital in Bykov's story? Forcing the patients to leave their ward, so he may sleep. He doesn't even bother to construct any lie, and just tells that to Bykov as is.
- Storybook Episode: This episode shows Bykov and his friends, colleagues and interns... but in Imperial Russia setting. This is a visualisation of Bykov's story which he wrote in one night (originally he planned to write their necrologies, but got carried away), and now wants to know what they think. Unfortunately, since all characters are based on Bykov's opinions about them, interns in his story looks even worse than their prototypes. And Phil has no counterpart at all.
- Tempting Fate: Bykov just exploded on Gleb, Semyon and Varya for not appreciating his story, and daring to criticise it. Phil thinks it's a good time to thank Bykov for not including him into a story, which, predictably, makes Bykov angry at him.
- Too Dumb to Live: All interns in Bykov's story are much dumber than their prototypes, even in early episodes, and predictably screws up their tasks (just to elaborate, how dumb they are, Semyon started shooting at other people, and continued even after Bykov arrived, Gleb got high on morphine and started running around naked, and Varya almost slept with some random guy (actually Kupitman's patient with gonorrhoea) just after he told her that he's "dying" and wants to experience sex before death, but their final act manages to up even that: they gets drunk and sets the full place on fire, destroying the hospital.
