Don’t expect “7th Heaven” to wrap up every loose end in its series finale Sunday, George Stults warned.

“That was how it was last year,” he said.

It’s been a long (11 seasons) and strange trip for the venerable CW family drama, and former Cascade resident Stults wouldn’t trade a minute of it.

“I was spoiled for five seasons,” Stults said (he joined the cast as Kevin in 2002). “I know what’s out there. I know I will never have it as good as I did for those five seasons.”

The series was supposed to wrap up last year. The cast and crew shot the finales, said their goodbyes, even started looking for work. But the WB, the show’s network home, was com- bining with UPN to form the new CW network. Things were up in the air, the new network needed reliable hits and so — after months of seesaw headlines saying the show was dead, then alive, then dead again — “7th Heaven” finally returned.

It’s understandable, then, that when the powers that be told the show’s writers to write another finale, they hedged their bets.

“This year, they didn’t have any clue whether the show would get picked up or not,” Stults said. “So they just left the final episode open. It’s a cute episode, (but) it’s just not like it was last year.”

And so Stults is back on the street, so to speak.

“I’m trying to hold off on hopping onto another TV show right away,” he said. “Thanks to ‘7th Heaven,’ I’m financially independent.

“I can be choosy, at least for a year,” Stults said. “After that, I’ll be begging for a job. I’ll be selling myself to Playgirl.”

It doesn’t hurt that Stults’ little brother and roommate, Geoff, appears to be gainfully employed on the new ABC show “October Road.” The show had a successful six-episode premiere in April and looks likely to return in the fall.

It was Geoff, now 29, who got George, 31, started in acting: An agent saw George eating lunch at a sidewalk cafe on Sunset Boulevard and stopped in the middle of the street to give him her card. It was one of those only-in-Hollywood moments, but Geoff was the one who talked his brother into it, telling the agent, “you don’t get him without me.”

And it was Geoff who landed on “7th Heaven” first, as recurring character Ben Kinkirk. George was auditioning for a guest spot, but the producers instead cast him as Ben’s policeman brother, Kevin.

Geoff left the show, although he’s popped up from time to time, but George stayed on and gradually became a central character, romancing and then marrying Lucy Camden (played by Beverly Mitchell).

“When I first got cast, I thought I was only going to be on there for an episode or two,” George Stults said. “They ended up bringing me back for the next season, marrying us off and then they kind of stuck with me.”

Nothing more than dumb luck, he said.

“I had no clue what was going on,” Stults said. “I just kept lucking out. I was raised in the business on this show.”

“7th Heaven’s” family-friendly plots and parade of issue-oriented special episodes might seem constrictive to a budding actor, but Stults said he’d stick around forever if the show stayed on.

“I knew that I was fortunate there and I had it good,” he said. “You don’t stop doing something that’s working and rolling.”

What’s next? Stults hopes to land in a couple of movies this summer and play it by ear. He does harbor some secret ambitions, though.

“Only two things that I won’t quit this business until I get one of them,” Stults said. “One, to be a vampire in a movie or a supercool TV show. Two is to be a Navy SEAL in a movie.”

The SEAL thing is a bit of wish fulfillment: Stults once planned to join the Navy.

For now, he’s enjoying life in Hollywood. He plans to visit home at the end of the month, and knock back a beer or two at The Keg in Manitou.

“See the folks, breathe some nice clean air,” he said, “and, of course, go to the same bar I’ve been going to since before I was legal.”

No Rockies games aired on Springs TV

I’ve been hearing from baseball fans for the past few weeks, wondering what happened to the weekend Rockies games Adelphia used to carry on Channel 32. Official word is that those games were carried as part of a channel called Adelphia Sports Net that shut down before the Comcast takeover. Comcast has no plans to air Rockies games in Colorado Springs.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0275 or awineke@gazette.com

- Find more TV commentary and news on the Web at springstvtalk .blogspot.com