Quickie (joke) - Production

Production

When the show was originally broadcast on CBS, the episodes usually had three Quickies (30- to 45-second gags which were based on original Garfield and U.S. Acres strips, rather than original made-for-TV stories), usually two "Garfield Quickies" (the first one being played before the intro theme) and one "U.S. Acres Quickie," the latter of which was never shown in syndication (except occasionally, mainly whenever a Quickie had something to do with the regular full episode it followed; e.g. the ‘U.S. Acres Quickie’ that follows the episode “Moo Cow Mutt” ). Midway through the second season, "Screaming with Binky" quickie-style segments were added. These "Screaming with Binky" segments were typically used at the halfway point of hour long blocks of Garfield and Friends (as Garfield ended each one with "We'll be right back.") to let the viewers know that unlike most Saturday morning cartoons at the time, it was not over in the usual half-hour. The DVD sets and Boomerang reruns restore the original rotation. After the third season, only one "Garfield Quickie" is shown per episode.

During the first season, most U.S. Acres segments were made to teach a social lesson, which is ironically the type of thing the show was against in its later seasons.

In syndication, Garfield and Friends aired in a thirty-minute format. Each episode consisted of a Garfield cartoon, a U.S. Acres cartoon, another Garfield cartoon, and a Garfield Quickie in that order. The theme for the rerun package was the same one that was in use on the regular television series at the time (having been introduced in season three), but none of the music from the earlier episodes was edited for syndication.