On Wednesday, “Criminal Minds” will be inducted into an elite club — TV series that have made it to 200 episodes.
For nine seasons, the FBI profilers of the Behavioral Analysis Unit have analyzed the country’s most twisted minds to anticipate these criminals’ next moves before they strike again.
In the milestone episode — aptly titled “200” and airing at 9 p.m. on CBS — JJ (A.J. Cook) is kidnapped and the BAU must delve into her time at the State Department for clues about her disappearance. The premise gives loyal “Criminal Minds” fans a back story for when the actress left for a season.
“I really wanted to show the audience what we think JJ was up to in the year that she wasn’t on the show,” executive producer Erica Messer tells The Post. “It’s the team working without her but having to dig into her past to figure out what she was up to so they can figure out why she’s in jeopardy today.”
It also gives the drama reason to bring back fan favorite Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster, who left the show in 2012) to help the team with the crisis.
“We’re so happy to see her, she was one of those faces at that table [read] that was a really comforting thing to have,” Messer says. “I had asked before she left, ‘Would you ever come back to be a guest star?’ As the production year rolls on and the budget gets tightened, your dreams don’t always come true. In this case, we could fight for that to happen, to come back in a big milestone episode.”
In fact, the episode is chock-full of guest stars including Jayne Atkinson as Erin Strauss (through flashbacks, since the character died in Season 8), Esai Morales as Section Chief Mateo Cruz, Josh Stewart as JJ’s husband, Detective William LaMontagne Jr. and Nicholas Brendon as Kevin Lynch.
“Criminal Minds” filmed the 200th episode in December, and CBS and ABC Studios — as is typical in such occasions — put on a reception on the stages for cast and crew and press to toast the milestone and cut a cake. Then came the real fun.
“We took the cast and crew to Las Vegas,” Messer says. “We flew everybody from Los Angeles and had a big party, and everybody stayed the night and flew back the next day. There was lots of gambling, lots of dancing, lots of fun.”
And while Messer says the writers’ room is still breaking stories for the end of the season, “We’ve got some really crazy cases coming up,” including one in an episode directed by star Thomas Gibson that will air at the end of February.
Messer co-wrote the episode with the show’s FBI consultant, which focuses on disrupted adoptions — children adopted from other countries who don’t fit in with their foster homes and end up being given away to other families. Such arrangements usually have no paper trail and may be brokered when struggling foster parents go online to ask others for advice.
“The problem is pedophiles go on there, present themselves as a foster family . . . and the truth is they’re bad people,” Messer says. “It was something that none of us had ever heard of before including the FBI, which is really scary.”