No pub is bad pub.
A lot of people were thinking and talking about Netflix that otherwise wouldn't.
They probly got decent ratings due to the mountains of positive spin they got from crt types. There were some half baked crt nods throughout that allowed a reflexive counter support from the political left as soon as the movie was criticized by conservatives, which as u note was obviously going to happen.
Also a lot of apolitical sick freaks watched it out of curiosity.
Just another skirmish in the culture war to cynically grab some eyeballs.