I had not intended to revisit some of these tawdry subjects right on the heels of my last column, but plot twists have been developing so rapidly in Trump’s Reality Entertainment Carnival that I decided to offer this handy Viewer’s Guide.

The names of the “shows” are mostly my own creation, but “the Don” deserves credit or blame for being the driving force behind the scripts.

The surprise hit of the season has been “Everyone Loves Stormy,” featuring the voluptuous, feisty adult film star Stormy Daniels. Daniels first met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe in 2006, and she told her account of their alleged affair to In Touch magazine in 2011. She also passed a polygraph exam about her version of events.

But the magazine did not release her interview at that time, and in October 2016, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, secretively arranged a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels to keep her story from going public.

Recently, however, Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, have sued to reclaim her right to tell her story. By the time this column goes to print, you might have had the chance to judge her credibility for yourselves if you watched Sunday’s 60 Minutes broadcast.

In “Who’s Suing Who?” just keeping track of the contestants is quite a challenge. Stormy Daniels’ real name is Stephanie Clifford, but in the nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, devised by Cohen, she is referred to as Peggy Peterson, while Cohen himself is disguised behind the LLC labeled Essential Consultants.

The third party to the NDA, who was designated by the pseudonym David Dennison, never signed the NDA until recently, which is one of the reasons that Avenatti alleges that the NDA is unenforceable.

But under pressure from Avenatti’s suit, Donald Trump has belatedly admitted to being “Dennison,” and Trump has countersued Daniels for $20 million to try to keep her quiet.

Meanwhile, in other lawsuits, Playboy model Karen McDougal has sued the publisher of the National Enquirer to regain her right to speak about her alleged affair with Trump, and Celebrity Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos has sued Trump for sexual harassment and defamation.

Judge Jennifer Schecter has allowed Zervos’ suit to proceed, saying that even the president is “not above the law” that protects ordinary citizens from defamation.

“Mum’s the Word” is all about how NDAs are also being employed by Trump to muzzle his own White House staffers. According to the agreement that he demands his staffers sign, they are not allowed to disclose any information that Trump deems confidential, even after their employment in the White House has ended or even in fictional form. Trump’s NDA threatens penalties of $10 million for violations.

“The Ax” is a popular series where a different White House personality gets thrown under the bus each week. This month’s casualties included the surprise resignation of Hope Hicks, Trump’s favorite Communications Consultant, after Hicks admitted to the House Intelligence Committee that she sometimes told “white lies” on behalf of her boss.

Other contestants who were eliminated included FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House Attorney John Dowd and National Security Adviser HR McMaster. McCabe’s firing came just two days before his scheduled retirement, and Tillerson got the ax the day after he agreed with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May that Russia was responsible for the deadly nerve agent assassination of two spies recently in England.

Meanwhile, on a cheerier note, it was revealed that one of last season’s finalists, Trump’s former security chief Keith Schiller, had been rewarded with a monthly paycheck of $15,000 from the RNC for being a “consultant” for their convention in 2020. Maybe he’ll show up again someday as a contestant on “Mum’s the Word.”

Another popular series is “Russian Roulette,” although the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee insist that there are simply no new scripts available, despite recent revelations, which included Russian oligarchs partying with Trump at lewd Las Vegas sex shows at the 2013 Miss USA Pageant.

And a crime drama being developed by Director Robert Mueller, tentatively called “Truth or Consequences,” is still being kept mostly under wraps. It promises a lot of familiar characters from the Trump campaign, and plenty of surprises.

John McColgan writes from his home in Joseph.