Patinkin's Departure Opens Minds

CBS knows its way around a bloody crime scene, but what to do when someone just goes missing?

The sudden departure of Mandy Patinkin from the hit procedural Criminal Minds, which bested timeslot opponent Lost in the Nielsen ratings early last season and never looked back, is now being attributed to personal reasons, rather than the "creative differences" cited earlier this week.

CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler would not divulge exactly why Patinkin requested that he be released from his contract after missing a scheduled table read (as first reported by E! Online's TV blog), but she did tell reporters that "creative differences is a euphemism for personal issues."

"The show is accommodating his needs," Tassler said Wednesday at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills.

ABC Studios and CBS Paramount Network Television said in a statement Monday that the actor's departure was "not in any way connected to contract renegotiations or salary issues."

When asked if the 54-year-old Patinkin, who underwent treatment for prostate cancer in 2004, left the series for health reasons, Tassler said that she didn't think TCA was the forum to discuss that.

"At some point, in the very near future, Mandy himself is going to address a lot of those questions," she said. "I really believe that."

The time was right to discuss what the Criminal Minds crew is going to do without lead FBI profiler Jason Gideon, however.

While they haven't yet determined how they're going to account for Patinkin's character's absence, the writers are "up to the challenge" and the shakeup has given them the opportunity to bring "a different character into the mix," Tassler said.

Another hot topic for CBS these days is who gets to inherit the skinny mike, and now it's looking as if Drew Carey's line could end up being "Come on down."

CBS confirmed Wednesday that the former sitcom star is in talks to take over The Price Is Right, which is without a host for the first time in its 35-year existence now that Bob Barker has retired.

While other candidates are still being looked at, Carey, 49, is currently considered to be the frontrunner.

"We're in talks with Drew, but it would be stupid for us not to be in talks with Drew," Tassler said.

The bespectacled Cleveland native, who hosted the improv comedy series Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1998, is already on board with CBS to helm the prime-time game show Power of 10, which premieres Aug. 7.

The Drew Carey Show ran from 1995 to 2004 on ABC and scored its eponymous star two People's Choice Awards for Favorite Male Television Performer—necessary credentials for someone who might be stepping into two of the most beloved shoes in daytime-TV history.

"You talk about Bob," Tassler said. "I mean, those are the biggest shoes in Hollywood to fill…This man is a legend. He's an icon. When we knew he was talking about retiring, the search began. It's a really, really daunting task. There's everyone else in the world, and there's Bob Barker."

Some of the mere mortals who have been considered for the job include Family Feud host and Seinfeld actor John O'Hurley, tan-man George Hamilton and Rosie O'Donnell. (But although O'Donnell won't be coming on down, competing on a celebrity version of The Apprentice or lunching with Elisabeth Hasselbeck anytime soon, the chat maven might be offered a recurring role on NBC's Friday Night Lights playing a high school soccer coach who wants some of the resources that those other Dylan Panthers are privy to, per TV Guide's Website.)

Barker's final new episode of The Price Is Right aired June 15 and the syndicated daytime staple is currently in repeats. The new host, whoever he or she turns out to be, will be in business—and living rooms—by September.

In other developments at the Tiffany Network:

• The brand-spankin' new fall season kicks off Wednesday, Sept. 19, with the premiere of the controversial new reality show Kid Nation, in which a group of children are called upon to form their own society—without parental supervision. "You have to stir public debate…we know people are going to be talking and discussing this," Tassler said, regarding the possible disaster such a scenario implies. "I don't want that to have a negative connotation." She added that, although there are no parents, there are nutritionists, paramedics and psychologists standing by.
• William Petersen is going to New York and Anthony LaPaglia is headed to Vegas on a night of CSI and Without a Trace (which is returning to Thursdays) crossover episodes. Meanwhile, David Caruso's Horatio Caine is going to discover that he has a son on CSI: Miami. 
•  There might be some indication as to why the smart and funny How I Met Your Mother is actually called How I Met Your Mother as Ted moves closer to meeting "the one."
• Now that they still have a network to call home, Stanley and Mimi are going to get engaged on Jericho.