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Jack Nicholson an Uneasy Rider in Mayberry, N.C.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Most of Jack Nicholson’s 1960s movies don’t brim over with traditional values--”The Wild Ride,” “Psych-Out,” “Hell’s Angels on Wheels” and “Easy Rider.”

His TV work, however, is more couch culture than counterculture. His credits include “Mr. Lucky,” “Barbara Stanwyck Theater,” “Sea Hunt,” “Bronco,” “Tales of Wells Fargo” and five episodes of “Dr. Kildare.” The most wholesome series he guest-starred on was “The Andy Griffith Show.”

He’s a clean-cut young Mr. Garland--in a suit yet--in the episode “Opie Finds a Baby” (Tuesday at 4:30 a.m. on KTTV Channel 11) from 1967--two years before “Easy Rider.” He and his nice wife aren’t perfect, though, so they’re destined to learn the No. 1 lesson in Mayberry: Nobody leaves town without a lecture from Sheriff Taylor.

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Opie isn’t perfect either. He takes bad advice from pal Arnold Bailey when the boys find the baby that Mrs. Garland has abandoned after a fight with her husband. The boys decide to hide the baby in their clubhouse until they can find him suitable parents.

They’re pretty picky about who that will be, but they have to move fast--before one of them is forced to change a diaper. Opie terrifies Miss Crump by asking if she would like to have a baby. Arnold terrifies Goober by asking if he wants to have one.

By afternoon, the Garlands, who are from Mount Pilot, have made up and are back for their baby. What they get is a lecture on responsibility (no jail time); Opie gets one too--plus one about the birds and bees.

Nicholson later appeared in another “Andy Griffith Show” episode, “Aunt Bee the Juror.” He’s a theft suspect, and Aunt Bee is the only one on the jury who believes he’s innocent--though she doesn’t know why. (Maybe it’s those pure-hazel eyes.)

DETAILS, DETAILS: In “The Andy Griffith Show,” Opie’s best friend in junior high is Arnold Bailey. Who is it in elementary school? Answer next week. The answer to last week’s quiz (In which much-derided sitcom did Ann Sothern provide only her voice?): “My Mother the Car.”

Set Your VCR

The title hero gets killed in “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” (Friday at 11 p.m. on the Disney Channel), the last of the original Crockett trilogy on “Walt Disney Presents,” but he’d be brought back for a couple of pre-Alamo episodes.

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The hotheaded teenager in a 1967 episode of “The Big Valley” (Monday at 4 p.m. on the Family Channel) is Academy Award-winner Richard Dreyfuss. The woman who plays his mom is only an Oscar nominee, Diane Ladd (“Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Rambling Rose”), whose other claim to fame is being the mother of Laura Dern.

Agnes Moorehead played Endora on “Bewitched” for eight years, but it was for “The Wild, Wild West” (Monday at 3 p.m. on KDOC Channel 56) that she got her Emmy. She’s a murderous matchmaker in the episode “The Night of the Vicious Valentine.”

Barbara Eden plays the daughter of the defendant on a “Perry Mason” (Tuesday at 3 a.m. on KTTV Channel 11) from 1957, the same year she made Lucy and Ethel jealous at a country club dance.

The Disney Channel begins airing the 10-part Hardy Boys adventure “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure,” Sundays and Mondays at 12:30 a.m. starting this weekend. The serial, which originally aired on 1956-57 season of “The Mickey Mouse Club,” stars Tim Considine as Frank and Tommy Kirk as his brother Joe.

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