‘Criminal Minds’ season 12, episode 9 video: Deeper look at key Joe Mantegna episode

If you’ve been looking to have a strong Rossi-centric episode of “Criminal Minds,” look no further than Wednesday night’s new installment entitled “Profiling 202.” We’ve got our first look at the installment courtesy of the video below, and if there is a single word that we’d use to describe it, it’s “intense.”

Also, this may be one of the worst birthdays out there for Joe Mantegna’s character.

If you haven’t seen or heard too much about this particular episode of the show just yet, “Profiling 202” is a sequel to the previous episode “Profiling 101” that features Tommy Yates, a serial-killer nemesis of Rossi’s, who is seemingly out to make his life a living hell. Given that this is not the first time that the two parties have squared off, we have to think that this time around, the game and the back-and-forth is going to be even more intense.

As we’ve said before, we have a complicated relationship with these sort of episodes featuring a familiar threat. From one vantage point, this is some tremendous material for Mantegna to play, and the part of us that is a massive fan of his work of course wants to see as much of this as humanly possible. Yet, at the same time what is great for Mantegna the actor is not necessarily great for Rossi the character, and you want to see him happy and at least reasonably safe when he is not on the job. So long as Tommy Yates is around, this particular sort of safety is in jeopardy.

If you like “Criminal Minds” when it is at its most exciting and dramatic, odds are that you’re going to enjoy this episode. Meanwhile, we’re also looking forward to some opportunities to get to know more about Stephen Walker, the new character played by Damon Gupton.

If you are interested in getting some other news when it comes to “Criminal Minds” and some of the stories that are coming up, be sure to head over to the link here. (Photo: CBS.)