I’ve been recording the National Geographic series Yellowstone Live, which I realize is not what the creators had in mind. I don’t feel too bad about time shifting the show since it isn’t really live–it has commercials. I did have high hopes for it, though. Due to a couple of long family vacations in Yellowstone, I have fond memories of live wild animal encounters, and I was hoping to ignite some of those feelings.

I have watched only the first episode so far. The show does have live segments, which typically consist of our base team contacting field naturalists in various locations throughout the Yellowstone ecosystem, who mostly seem to be viewing landscape and describing what we just missed: The beavers were eating, but they just entered their lodge! Those black dots are bison, who were rutting right here, but have now moved downrange! Then we will see some recorded footage of the animals doing the things we just missed. Very recently recorded footage, presumably; I’ll call it not-quite-live.

The helicopter-borne naturalist did not find any wolves, but she was able to share some spectacular aerial shots of the Grand Prismatic Spring and the Upper Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Wolves I would quite impressed to see, since there are just over 100 in the entire ecosystem, which is much larger than the Park itself, which has an area of almost 3500 square miles.

Fun fact: the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined.

Back to the show. The goofiest live shot we nearly missed was of the geyser Old Faithful. Note to the uninitiated: That geyser gets its name from its completely predictable eruption schedule. Our team showed it not erupting, and expressed some speculation about whether it would do so during the show. Huh? Spoiler alert: It did.

Good effort, though! The show is trying to catch something live, and without cheating. I enjoyed seeing a lot of my favorite Yellowstone spots. There were pre-filmed bits of interest as well, including a hiker being rescued from rough terrain, and grizzly bears thoroughly trashing a clueless camper site set up inside a bear recovery area–including eating burgers left on the grill.

The most shocking parts of the show were the not-quite-live shots featuring humans doing super stupid things. Crawling close to a feeding bear to get a picture. Crossing a tiny bridge within a few feet of a snorting, stamping bison standing. The Most Likely Darwin Winner award though, goes to the fellow who incited a bison to charge at him in a torero sort of way, multiple times. Wow.

Bison are apparently the most dangerous animals in the park, probably because a lot of them are close to crowds of people, people who often don’t view them as dangerous. There are other ways to die or get injured there, including falling into a hot spring and getting lost on a long hike.

On average, about 160 people per year die while visiting national parks, a death rate of less than one in 1 million. I probably won’t see that happen on Yellowstone Live.