Once CBS chief Nina Tassler used her platform at the TCA's to clarify that the "creative differences" that drove Mandy Patinkin to bolt Criminal Minds were more of the "personal issues" nature (to her credit, she refrained from pandering to the assembled critics by making comically exaggerated cuckoo noises and twirling a finger around her temple), we thought our PatinkinWatch feature had seen its last update. But this morning, TVGuide.com puts the actor back on our radar, reporting that he'll return to the Minds set to make a final appearance in a single, closure-providing scene:

Hoping to finally close the Case of the Vanishing Criminal Minds Star, reporters at today's CBS Television Critics Association panel confronted president Nina Tassler about the exact nature of the "creative differences" that might induce an actor to flee a successful series without explanation. Clarified Tassler:

The search for actor Mandy Patinkin, whose recent. mysterious failure to appear at the table read of whatever second-tier CBS procedural he stars on engaged all of Hollywood in a desperate manhunt for the missing thespian late last week, is over. The good news: Patinkin seems to be OK, and both his network and studio have thus refrained from assassinating his character in the press over the no-show. The bad news: "creative differences"—the "it's not you, it's me" of insincere Hollywood excuses—have driven him off the series. Says Broadcasting & Cable:

Advancing the story of Mandy Patinkin's unexplained absence from yesterday's table read for CBS procedural Criminal Minds [Ed.note—Is that the one with David Caruso and the sunglasses or the one with Vincent D'Onofrio and the perverts? Have an intern look that up.] broken on E!'s Watch with Kristin blog, TVGuide.com's Ausiello Report says that the show's producers are retaliating by writing the actor out of their episode: