Photo: Robert Voets/CBS

Few “Survivor classics” have been improved by the new era. There are only two instances I can think of: getting a proper theme song back and the Survivor auction. I never loved the auction, where players bid on food rewards and advantages that could be feasts, game changers, or a bottle of dirty water. Everyone got the same amount of cash. It was basically about who could be the first to shout, “Jeff, you can have all my money!”

But in the new era, it’s actually kind of exciting. The players have to scramble for bamboo tubes hidden all over camp with different amounts of money in them. Sierra is excellent at finding them, banking the most at just over a thousand smackeroonies. Andy, however, is as terrible at this as he is at not fainting on the first day of gameplay. The editors are savaging him even worse than they did Rome before his eviction. He’s walking by a bamboo sitting atop a pile of rocks and not seeing it. He tells his supposed ally Genevieve that he just wants to find one, walks by a tube in a rock face, and she grabs it as soon as he’s past and puts it in the bank. Lady, at least give Andy a little bit of scratch.

It actually works to Andy’s advantage because the person left with the most money at the end of the auction loses their vote at Tribal Council. Jeff pulls the number of auction items out of a bag so the players have no idea when it will stop. I like that this becomes about strategy: How can the players maximize their reward by minimizing their threat? The easiest thing for players with lots of cash is to just pick an item, bet the farm, and hope that under Jeff’s pretty little cover is a burrito instead of two fish eyes. I like that some of the dishes this time come with cash back to make the strategy more complicated, and one item — sorry to the Survivor Outwit, Outlast, Out-Breakfast Sunrise Spectacular, but Moons Over My Hammy will continue to be the only iconic breakfast entrée name — where the players have to compete in a classic “eating gross things” challenge.

My favorite moment is when Kyle buys a plate of Buffalo wings, but he tells Jeff that he has been a vegan for six years and only recently became vegetarian just so he would have more things he could eat in case he got selected to play on the show. He then decides he will go against his beliefs and dig right in. Jeff asks him why he’s doing it. “Well, because you haven’t done us the decency of giving us even a tiny little bit of rice, so my starvation has forced me to leave my morals behind,” he says. Just kidding. He just said he was hungry.

There is enough to keep the auction exciting, and I love that it took up a whole chunk of the episode, showing our players having the time of their lives. I also love that there are no advantages for sale. In the past, everyone would sit on their hands waiting for that item that would give them an edge, but since they knew it wasn’t coming, they were throwing money around like venture capitalists on a ketamine bender.

The one person who gets a reward is Rachel. In her bucket of fries is a scroll telling her that a hidden immunity idol is sewn into the corner of the tarp in the middle of the camp. Much like Sue’s red-handed idol, this is another great way of hiding it: It’s in plain sight, and it’s treacherous to get but not so hard as to be entirely daunting. Rachel, always a champ, manages to pluck it out while everyone in the shelter ignores her.

After the auction, it seems like the old Lavo (red like lava) and the old Gata (yellow like mellow) want to get together and pick off the remaining Tuku (blue like suede shoes) one by one, starting with Kyle, who keeps winning immunity challenges. I am so mad that I have to remember the stupid tribe names from the pre-merge. We’ve seen this in every season of the “new era.” The small tribes lead to intense bonding and forced voting blocs so that people never get to the merge and say, “Oh, I found new friends to work with; let’s turn the game upside down.” No, they always just stick with their numbers as long as they possibly can, which makes the second stage of the game quite boring. Go back to two tribes! Or, better yet, try a season with no tribes. Just plop everyone down on the same beach and let them figure it out. They can self-divide into groups themselves.

At the immunity challenge, it’s another Survivor classic: Hold a pail in the air as long as you can, and the last person wins. But Jeff has a twist. There will be both a male winner and a female winner. To prove it, Jeff brings out an exact copy of the immunity necklace, the one that a member of Hordak’s Horde seemingly assembled in an assault on all retinas everywhere. Couldn’t they have classified the ladies’ necklace just a little bit? We couldn’t spare one rhinestone? One bangle? Nothing?

Poor Sue, who wins the challenge and has to wear that ugly bat signal around her neck. Of course she won: This challenge is all about strength-to-weight ratio, and Sue is both short and strong, giving her the easiest path to victory. After Sue wins, she gives us a whole speech in confessional about how people of any age should apply to Survivor to show that they can do it. Also, during the auction, after Sierra won her margarita, she joked that she was sharing a marg with Jeff Probst. He shot back that if you want to do that, apply to be on Survivor. Then, we got the weekly commercial about how we should all apply to be on the show. Okay, what is the deal with this? Is no one applying anymore? Are they scraping the bottom of the barrel? Why do they need to convince us, people who are already tuned into the show, to come out and play on our favorite program? Who else are they hoping will apply? Shouldn’t they try showing these commercials during, like, The Challenge or something and get some newbies up in this piece?

Anyway, Kyle also wins immunity (again: strong dude, not lots of body weight), so two of the former Tuku are safe. But as soon as they’re back to camp, Genevieve tries to rally the other Lavo and the Tuku to get the Gata out. She thinks they’re more dangerous, more charismatic, and tighter as a group. This seems to solidify when Andy realizes that Sam and Sierra are just amusing him and will discard him whenever it is suitable for them. So while Andy and Genevieve are ready to make some big moves, they’re not thinking about setting up a new coalition; they’re thinking about just realigning the existing ones. It just aligns Lavo with Tuku instead of with Gata.

There’s some disagreement on who they’re going to vote for — Sam, Sierra, or Rachel — so there is uncertainty going into Tribal. After what seemed like an eventless Tribal, Rachel decides to play her shot in the dark, and she is not safe, but she holds on to her idol. The votes come in an even tie between Sam and Sierra. Because Sam lost his vote at the auction, Sierra gets to revote but he doesn’t. Her vote is the only one cast for Sam, and she goes home. She was the best choice because she was the only thing keeping Sam and Rachel together. Now that Gata has totally ruptured, a smart player could take them and try to forge a new alliance, something with three or four people that could take them to the end. That probably won’t happen, though; it will just be more Tribal shit until the final five. The new era can’t fix everything, but at least it fixed the Survivor auction.

 Well, at least they fixed the Survivor auction.