The opening credits consist of a montage of clips from numerous episodes-- some of them from the second season!

Did they create a different opening montage for syndication than occurred during its original network run?

OR did they have most of the episodes in the bank before the series even aired?

I've noticed an early episode that has a totally different montage, with fewer clips. Could this be what the original opening looked like? Why didn't they change that??

The opening credits consist of a montage of clips from numerous episodes-- some of them from the second season!

Did they create a different opening montage for syndication than occurred during its original network run?

OR did they have most of the episodes in the bank before the series even aired?

I've noticed an early episode that has a totally different montage, with fewer clips. Could this be what the original opening looked like? Why didn't they change that??

I think that all Monkees episodes are syndicated with the S2 opening credits. I have seen the S1 opening credits, and they feature clips, such as Davy's head hitting a bell and Micky going down the spiral staircase face-first into a chocolate cake, that do not appear in any episode in syndication. I would enjoy seeing the S1 opening with S1 reruns, but I suppose that it was easier at times to syndicate using a uniform opening.

I have seen the same credit changes in Bewitched (using a B&W version of the S3 opening with S1 & S2) and The Addams Family, as seen on TV Land (S1 opening used with all episodes, thereby leaving Jackie Coogan, front-credited in S2, uncredited for his appearances that season).

I believe when the Monkees went into Saturday morning reruns, they tacked the S2 credits on all but 2 of the season one episodes (in my recollection it was Royal Flush and Too Many Girls). They tooled around with these so much that sometimes in syndication you'll see some of the rerun prints with the soundtracks from the CBS and ABC Saturday morning reruns. It isn't always consistent from market to market either. When MTV ran them in the 80s, so did a local station here and they had a different set of prints so when the music was redubbed sometimes I'd see different songs on the same episodes.

There are also a few little snippets in the S2 opening that aren't in the episodes. They are either from an outtake or some footage they didn't use for one reason or another (Mike clapping his hands in front of the building comes to mind and I don't know why but would figure this is from the Alias Micky Dolenz episode). That isn't all that uncommon though as sometimes when you watch shows that have a wrap-up they'll show a different take, different angle, or extension of a scene in the preview. You do see that a lot in the summaries on the second part of Batman episodes.

I always thought it was weird that you'd see a S2 shot in the credits for a S1 episode. This was before I was aware that there was a credit sequence specific to S1 or knew anything about the history of the show.