Survivor 47’s auction—fun, but not an auction!—leads to a brilliant Tribal Council move

One characteristic of new-era Survivor is that some words don’t really mean anything. After two episodes of You’re merged! Never mind! Okay, now you are! But let’s do teams!, it seems like the players are actually, finally merged, i.e. one tribe that all plays together.

So it was time for the Survivor Auction, its second return in the new era, a welcome return to a component of classic Survivor. Except this wasn’t an auction.

When the players read their tree mail—“Get ready to get happy: It’s the Survivor auction”—I thought Auctioneer McBabble was going to auction off his favorite thing, love. Thankfully, no.

Once again, the players had to find cash to spend in the auction, which had been strewn through the jungle in small little bamboo tubes.

They raced around, with Gabe and Sierra piling up the tubes, and Andy getting the Bruce edit as he moped around and walked right past tube after tube, camera operators zooming and swinging to show us what he’d missed.

“I saw that you found a lot. I just need one,” he said, and then Genevieve grabbed a tube from right where he was standing. The editing was so hilariously brutal.

“I have my eyes. They work fine,” he told us, and I wonder if a visit to a licensed optometrist might be in order.

I’m sure a producer got a promotion after using Sam and his sports reporter skills to do a post-hunt narration. “I’m live from the islands of Survivor 47,” he said, where “a Survivor icon is back.” Sandra?!?

In the end, Sierra had by far the most cash, $1,060, more than 1.5 times Gabe’s $660.

For a reward challenge alone, I was thrilled. And when Jeff Probst said, “let’s have some fun today,” he wasn’t exaggerating; it was a lot of fun, and worth all of the screen time.

Of course, then Probst turned into Auctioneer McExposition, telling the players, “This morning, you had a money scramble” and “the reason for the money scramble is…” Wake me up when this is over, please.

He also reminded them that the player with the most money lost their vote. I’d blissfully forgotten about that, and wish they’d drop that. If Probst needs punishment for the player with the most money at the end, maybe just smash their hand with a hammer instead?

By the way, it turned out Andy’s $0 meant that he was not at risk of losing his vote. So the next time the auction appears, and a player knows they’re in trouble, what are the chances they just sit out the search for cash and use that to their advantage? That could be solved by giving everyone the same amount of money—you know, like the auction used to do.

So, structurally, there are problems. The biggest: this was not an auction at all.

For the very first item, Auctioneer McFraudface just said, “first $60 buys it.” What kind of auction is that? That’s just a transaction. I almost wrote “sale,” but $60 for chips and soda are not a sale, they’re the kind of prices that just led half of American voters to reelect a different rambling reality TV host. But I digress.

Probst later sold a chance at winning breakfast for $200, though the people who bought in got to keep their money if they lost.

The real problem with the lose-a-vote punishment, especially combined with an unknown number of items, is that it kills suspense for almost every sale. Most of the bids went like this:

Probst: Player X, as you can see on my Chalkboard of Pain, you have the most money, so if this is the last item, you get your hand smashed!

Probst: It’s not the last item, tee hee! What could it be?!

Player X: Take all of my money; I don’t want to be punished, beach daddy!

This is just another way Jeff Probst has turned Survivor into a game that he and his fellow producers play, giving the players less and less agency. That said, even in that more restrictive container, the auction was still entertaining.

Here’s how it played out for each player, from most money to least:

• Sierra: $1,060, $800 for a mystery item: a margarita, salsa, and guac, $260 for peanut butter and chocolate, which she shared with Gabe and Caroline
• Gabe: $660, for a mystery item: coconut full of water
• Teeny: $640, for a giant bowl of mac and cheese
• Sol: $600, spent on chips and soda for $60, then $540 for an apple pie, for which he got $60 cash back
• Kyle: $580, $560 for a mystery item: buffalo wings for the vegetarian, plus celery and carrots
• Rachel: $500, for a mystery item she correctly guessed was a burger that included a note in her fries
• Genevieve: $440 for a pile of sugary desserts
• Sue: $380 for a burrito and iced tea
• Sam: $360, $200 of which he spent on the breakfast auction, leaving him with $160
• Caroline: $280, for two fish eyes, one of which she ate
• Andy: $0, for Nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!

The sound design/foley/whatever of Sol crunching chips and Caroline biting into the fish eye should have come with a warning and an NC-17 rating.

Some of the comedy came from Jeff Probst walking in with covered trays, at one point speaking in a Shakespearean voice, and saying things like, “I’m using my best acting skills” to “sucker you in.” Let us not forget that Probst is quite an actor!

That was on display when Kyle won buffalo wings, a problem because he’s a vegetarian, Probst was like, “talk to me about the meat issue.” See also Jeff Probst talking to fish who he wants to transplant from a tank to a cardboard box: Talk to me about the water issue.

Kyle said he shifted from veganism to vegetarianism to prepare for Survivor, and got a stunned reaction (“Wow!”). Kyle decided to eat the wings, and got the bonus of breaking his dietary practice while having it narrated: “Oh, you’re thinking about it.” “Oh he’s going for it. This is a moment right now.” “Why are you doing it?”

As a fellow vegetarian—pescatarian, technically—I don’t see any issue with Kyle eating meat once, in the same way no one cares if an omnivore eats, say, a vegetarian burrito. But I was worried for him, because I don’t know what my stomach would do if I suddenly re-introduced something that it hadn’t seen in two decades. People regularly yak up rewards on Survivor without that added complication. Thankfully, no yakking from Kyle.

There was yakking from Sue, when she, Sam, Sierra, and Caroline competed for breakfast. The challenge: eating a grub, a true Survivor classic (though a fascinating one to rewatch for how different Probst handled that very first challenge).

Sierra bailed, and got her money back; Caroline and Sue also did when they lost to Sam.

The auction also gave us a window into Jeff Probst’s transformation into his own version of Julie Chen’s Chenbot:

• “That’s how you eat a pie on Survivor right there.”
• “That’s a Survivor burger right there.”
• “That’s how you do it on Survivor, Caroline”

That’s a whole lot of nonsense words right there! Also nonsense: Sam lost his vote, having failed to spend the rest of his money. Had there been a true auction, instead of a $200 price, that might have gone differently.

Rachel’s French fry advantage—and huge props to the, uh, props department for creating an advantage that blended in with fries—was a note that said “There is a Hidden Immunity idol sewn into the corner of your tarp.”

This was the first of Rachel’s two spectacular moments this episode. She had to use the machete to cut open stitches on the canvas tarp—and she ended up doing that while everyone was sitting in the shelter! A camera operator captured her sawing away while others were chatting, oblivious.

Earlier, Sam told us “The Gata-Tuku war is absolutely coming.” Sam, I’d appreciate it if you’d refer to original tribes by their actual names: the Yellow-Blue war.

The real war, though, at least for Sole Survivor, seems to be between Caroline, Genevieve, and Rachel, simply because they’re all playing strong but understated games.

Genevieve Teeny trying to work with former Gata “they’re so charismatic, they’re so big and strong, but they are the most dangerous to me on this beach”

Genevieve pitched Caroline and Sue on voting out Sam, but then said Rachel over Sam. Caroline told us, “damn, that’s what I wanted to do.”

Survivor 47 episode 8’s immunity challenge: holding things! From left to right: Sol Yi, Sierra Wright, Sam Phalen, Andy Rueda, Teeny Chirichillo, Genevieve Mushaluk, Sue Smey, Rachel LaMont, Gabe Ortis, Caroline Vidmar, and Kyle Ostwald. (Photo by Robert Voets/CBS)

The immunity challenge started and I said, out loud, “Oh good, holding things!” I think they’re just trolling us now.

For immunity, players had to hold a spool connected to a bucket containing 25 percent of their pre-game body weight. Can all humans hold a certain percentage of their body weight or is this just a bullshit way to make this seem fair?

The twist: there was immunity for two people, one woman and one man.

As the challenge began, Narrator McExposition said, “This requires a lot of willpower,” and as always, I think he meant having to listen to his babble.

Sam and Genevieve dropped first, and our host helpfully explained: “one man, one woman out.” That’s one penis, one vagina for those of you keeping track on your genital scorecards.

Eventually, Sue won, beating Rachel, and Kyle won, beating Andy.

“How would this even be possible?” Sue said, “because I got a bunch of warriors over here,” she said. I’m surprised she didn’t add, And I’m half their age!

But she did in an interview. “I came into this game wanting to be an inspiration to my generation,” Sue told us, obviously talking about Gen Z. “If I can do this against all of these younger people, you can too. Age is just a number.” Yeah, one you make up every time you say it!

Sue left us with a direct plea to people in nursing homes: “Get out of your beds, get out your couches, believe in yourself, and come play Survivor.”

Kyle was safe, though he knew not for long. “This is not good. It’s good for me today, but it could be the death of me tomorrow,” he said.

As part of the Gata/Lavo alliance, Sam pitched voting out Gabe instead of Caroline. “Before you know it, there ain’t going to be any more Tuku left,” he said.

Sierra called Andy “an easy number” to help with that, adding, “until we can no longer tolerate him.”

Andy, however, showed a glimmer of game. “They look at me as an expendable piece,” he said, and it was time for him to “cut bait, goodbye.” That meant turning on his fellow Gata/yellow tribe members. He told Caroline, “I’m flipping!”

“Sam, Sierra, Rachel—they’re going to be shocked by the new Andy,” he said. “I can turn into the pivotal player in this post-merge.”

Andy and Rachel compare notes on Survivor 47 episode 8 (Photo by Robert Voets/CBS)

But, alas, Andy was but a number in this new anti-Gata/yellow alliance. What they couldn’t seem to agree on was who to vote for. Sam? Sierra? Rachel? During all this chatter, Sierra said there were “weird vibes” to Rachel, who agreed.

Genevieve pointed out “slim to none” chance that the rest of the players could agree who to vote for.

One thing kind of lost in this strategizing was the Rachel-Sol alliance we saw at the start of the episode. Sol described putting together the SSAs—the Sol Secret Agents, and confessed to Rachel that he sent her the advantage. “I knew it was you,” she said. Also going nowhere: Kyle calling. “Hey, Mr. Miyagi” when Sol cut open a coconut. Sol gracefully turned this into an anecdote that his tribe members had never seen The Karate Kid.

At Tribal Council, after some talking, the players voted, and the editors showed us none of them. However, they did show us Rachel subtly reaching into her bag to put her idol in her pocket, where she tumbled it around in her hand.

Before Probst read the votes, he said his line about advantages, and Rachel said, “Jeff.” Then she revealed she’d played her Shot in the Dark because a “feeling of dread filled my stomach.”

As Probst revealed her Shot in the Dark failed, I was thinking: Why give up a vote instead of playing the idol? And then I realized what she’d done, and I think it may be the most brilliant strategic use of a Shot in the Dark ever.

I rewound and rewatched, and when Rachel said, “Jeff,” she paused, and explained while sitting and looking around. I suspect she was looking for their reactions—to decide whether to play her new idol. The Shot in the Dark was a mere decoy. Also, flushing it out now makes her a less-risky vote, and she still has her idol. Genius!

Votes went to Sam 4, Sierra 4, and Gabe 1. That meant a tied vote and a re-vote.

“This is a unique situation that needs an explanation,” Probst said, and explained that “when you have two players that are tied, they don’t vote simply because they can only vote for each, so their votes nullify each other. That’s the only reason they don’t vote.”

Is it? The 2-2-2 tie in season 28 left all three tied players on the sidelines, even though their votes would not have nullified each others’. Maybe the key part is “two players.” Also, these rules have clearly changed over time; the Survivor rulebook from the 2010 era says clearly that, after a tied vote, the players who are tied leave and the rest of the players have two minutes to decide who to vote out, otherwise the original two are immune.

Anyway, both Sam and Rachel did not have votes, so Sam wasn’t allowed to vote but Sierra could. That did not matter; she cast the lone vote for Sam, and she was voted out.

Teeny turned to Sierra and said “sorry,” and I’m 100 percent sure that will not matter when Teeny ends up in the final three and gets zero votes for playing such a passive game.

Andy, meanwhile, said in his voting confessional, “I acknowledge I’m doing you dirty, but I’m a dirty player.” He may think of himself as Survivor’s strategic Pig-Pen, but he definitely has a little more game than I thought he did in episode one.