Despite trying to show that she's alright, Sophia was deeply hurt by what happened between her and Gleb. Worrying, Kupitman asks Bykov what happened, thinking that it's his fault; Bykov, who still thinks that it was Semyon who led her to that condition, points Kupitman towards him. Lobanov sends him to Gleb, and Gleb reminds Kupitman that it all started with the ultimatum which Kupitman himself gave to Gleb: stay away from Sophia at all cost. Kupitman accepts that it's his fault, and now has to somehow solve his screwup. He thinks that the problem would die out on its own eventually, but when the returns home, he has to interrupt Sophia's suicide attempt. "Problem would die out", indeed... Now, he has to keep her in the hospital, under surveillance. Gleb comes up with a plan: all this mess has started with Gleb offending Sophia by refusing her, now, it's her turn to reject him. Unfortunately, plan fails miserably, as Sophia actually falls for Gleb's blatant advances, and when he tries to explain that she misunderstood him, she takes it as a sign that it's another prank. He tries to ask Lyuba for advice, but she suggests to just stop lying to Sophia. Kupitman does as suggested, which makes Sophia very angry at her uncle — and convinces her that Gleb is in love with her, which is... not exactly true.
Maxim's patient only trusts witch doctors and herbal "medicine", meaning that if Max wants to deal with her, he must come up with a plan. He has an idea: hire Alexei to pretend that he's a witch doctor, so the stubborn patient would trust him, and he would give her "charged water" (actually stuffed with medicine). But this achieves the opposite effect, as now the patient has even less trust in doctors, and is confident that she's perfectly healthy. She then recommends "witch doctor Alexei" to all her friends (whom he has plenty); they already arrived in the hospital, and would not accept "no" as an answer. Alexei improvises some "ritual" which resembles gymnastics (which should be done with eyes closed), which Max can use to provide them all with medicine. At this, they gets busted by Bykov. Bykov tries to show the patient and her friends "true medicine", but gets completely ignored, and gives up, allowing Alexei to proceed with original plan: if it works, it works.
This episode provides examples of:
- Annoying Patient: Maxim's patient prefers healing herbs over actual medicine and wants to being discharged immediately instead of being treated, since she only trusts witch doctors. Since Bykov would not accept it as excuse to not deal with her, Maxim must find an alternate solution... and he finds — he hires Alexei to impersonate a "witch doctor". Then the patient brings her friends (which is a lot of people). Even Bykov fails to clear their superstitions, and gets forced to accept Maxim's plan with "witch doctor Alexei": what else they can do if these women are so indoctrinated, they would not accept anyone else as authority?
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Kupitman isn't exactly the best uncle in the world, but when he notices that Sophia spent a whole night crying, and now can't even think about work, he assumes that it was related to Bykov, and rushes to tear him a new one for coming too far with abusing her. Then, later, when it seems that Sophia locked herself in the bathroom to commit suicide, Kupitman panics and breaks the lock in order to save her; fortunately, he manages to prevent anything bad from happening.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Played for Laughs; when Maxim (intentionally) ignores clear sarcasm in Bykov's question ("am I supposed to congratulate you on a great job?") and replies with "it would be nice", Bykov "tries" to say the word "congratulations", only to "fail" to pronounce anything past first syllable.
- Casanova Wannabe: Invoked and Exploited by Gleb, who intentionally acts very blatantly in his flirting with Sophia, wanting her to reject him (so she would once again feel herself in power). She falls for it, sabotaging the whole plan.
- Dude, Not Funny!: When Gleb mocks Kupitman's "she would be okay, just need some time" approach with question "so, it seems that problem died out by itself?". Kupitman replies with that Sophia almost died herself.
- Gilligan Cut: Alexei refuses to participate in Maxim's plan (which involves Alexei impersonating a witch doctor for Max's stubborn patient). Cut to Maxim introducing "witch doctor Alexei" to his patient.
- Gone Horribly Right: Kupitman tries to help Sophia, and finally admits that it was him who ordered Gleb to act like a jerk to Sophia, to sabotage their relationship before they even start. Sophia immediately jumps to conclusion that this must means that Gleb actually loves her, and rushes to him. Not only is this exactly what Kupitman tried to prevent initially, they just jumped from one awkward situation into another awkward situation, since Gleb isn't actually interested in Sophia (that one time which started all this mess they both were drunk). Gleb even has a different girlfriend already!
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Gleb's plan how to cure Sophia's depression involves him staging up the situation where she may reject him in rather humiliating way (mirroring the way he rejected her earlier, which started all this mess). Instead, she accepts his offer of sex, and when (rather shocked) Gleb tries to explain that it was not his original intent, she interprets it as him playing another cruel prank on her, and all returns to square one.
- Insistent Terminology: When Alexei objects to Maxim calling that stubborn granny "their" patient, Maxim states that he didn't "force" Lyosha into joining; "asked", "persuaded", but not "forced", meaning that Alexei did this "voluntarily".
- Internal Reveal: Sophia finally learns about Kupitman's plan how to sabotage her relationship with Gleb. She is less than amused by such blatant intervention in her personal life, especially since she expected that at least Kupitman would be better than her father.
- Interrupted Suicide: When Kupitman arrives back home, only to fail to find Sophia anywhere, he starts acting nervously. Then he realises that she locked herself in the bathroom, and panics when she doesn't reply in any way. Fortunately, when he finally breaks the lock and rushes in, it turns out that she simply locked herself in for isolation. Though it's unclear whether she planned to do it eventually or not, Kupitman thinks that yes, she did, and decides to just bring her in the hospital, where she would be under surveillance.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Gleb suggests to invoke this as part of his plan to "save" Sophia. In short, since all of this started by Gleb "rejecting" Sophia in very ugly way, they must now give her an opportunity to reject Gleb in similar manner. This would restore her self-confidence and give her feeling of revenge being done. She actually accepts Gleb's blatant proposals, instead.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kupitman ordering Gleb to dump Sophia was causing problems even before, but now Sophia is in deep depression after that last time Gleb showed his "indifference". All of this just so Kupitman may preserve relationship with his cousin, Sophia's interests be damned. Kupitman's plot for this episode involves him dealing with consequences of this decision (barely averting a tragedy).
- Older Than They Look: When Maxim's patient (correctly) starts doubting that Alexei may be a witch doctor, due to being too young, Maxim states that Alexei is twice older than he looks, keeping beauty with the help of healing herbs and his "magic".
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Pretty much Bykov's approach to "folk medicine": he only considers "traditional medicine" to be the "true" medicine, everything else is superstitions at best and outright fraud at worst; he would even argue with patients over this. Unfortunately, Maxim's new patient (and her friends) turns out to be too stubborn even for him, so in the end, after giving them a full lecture, to no avail, Bykov accepts defeat and allows Max and Lyosha to proceed further with their "witch doctor Alexei" plan (in short, patient actually trusts Alexei, which Maxim exploits to provide her with medicine, disguised as "charged water").
