After an attempt to turn the controversial necrophilia angle into comedy that fell flat on the live audience on 10/28 in Detroit with one of the, pardon the expression, deadest opening interview segments in history, the art imitates life line came out when HHH, speaking for his boss, talked about doing what he wanted, when he wanted. HHH actually tried to combine comedy with audience sympathy, to make fun of people saying they would never watch the show again (with the belief that most who said it were watching him at the time).
As it turned out, the joke was on them.
After a week of controversy designed to garner mainstream attention, which didn’t happen, and build ratings, the 10/28 Raw ended up being the least watched episode of Raw since early 1998. While it was the third lowest rated live episode of the show in that time period with a 3.45 rating, the total viewers of 4.34 million was less than the 4.35 million viewers on the 9/9 show, which did a 3.40 rating.
