Before last evening’s debate began, everyone in the Clinton and Trump camps—Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump—looked pale and on the brink of vomiting. Too bad for them that they weren’t like us viewers at home, free to vomit any time we felt like it, which was often. Everyone knew it was going to be a horrible evening for most people there, and so it proved to be. But it was also, let’s face it, a captivating evening. Donald Trump had the impossible task of having to recover from two disastrous death-spiraling weeks. And, like it or not, he kind of managed to do it.

How did this happen? At the outset, Trump seemed to have two options: to be mild and retiring, which would send off defeatist vibes, or to be aggressive and uncontrolled, which would make him lose the way he did in the last debate. Instead, he managed to exercise some self-control and stay calm, almost Klonopin-like, while, at the same time, baiting Hillary Clinton nearly as relentlessly as she baited him in the last round. Clinton is a much more controlled candidate than Trump, but during many of Trump’s statements she looked enraged—so livid that she seemed to have trouble collecting herself when it was her turn to speak. At one point, perhaps more than one, her jaw even dropped in disgust. In short, she was rattled.

It’s hard to blame her. Trump was determined to fight savagely, something made clear by the presence in the audience of two women who have accused Bill Clinton of rape and a third woman who was raped at age 12 (not by a Clinton, all parties agree!) and alleges that Hillary Clinton behaved callously towards her when Clinton was representing the defendant. About 15 minutes into the debate, maybe a little more, after Clinton had been firing all guns at Trump over his awful joking on tape about grabbing women “by the p----,” Trump decided to go there, bringing up Bill Clinton’s sexual history. Hillary was prepared for this, but it’s hard to prepare fully for it, and the disgust and anger was clear. It was sickening but, I’ll admit, also hypnotizing.

WATCH: Hillary Clinton Responds to Donald Trump’s Remarks on Women

At that point, much of the Twitterverse decided that Trump had self-destructed, but that moment on stage seemed almost to relax him—almost as if he was thinking, “There, now that’s out of the way”—and subsequently warm him up. He proceeded to attack Clinton for having deleted emails (an exchange she lost, actually), for failing to plug tax loopholes as a senator (it didn’t make much sense and didn’t dent her much), for voting to authorize George W. Bush to go to war against Iraq (hard to say whether this worked), and for supporting trade deals. Each time, in the split screen, Clinton looked like she wished to incinerate him, and many of her smiles before speaking were grimaces. She attacked right back, but somehow, substance aside, she was on the defensive. You could feel Trump’s confidence rising and hers falling.

Throughout most of this, the debate moderators, Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, seemed like disgusted parents being dirtied by a backseat food fight conducted by their disgusting children. They seemed quite pissed off, to put it bluntly, and that was before things even began. Soon, they were trying in vain to get both candidates to stick to their times. They also tried in vain to get Trump to answer directly the questions he was asked. At one point, Raddatz, who seems to have strong feelings about the humanitarian crisis in Syria, couldn’t resist jumping in and debating Trump a bit herself. (As is normally the case, no one asked about U.S policy regarding a similarly dire crisis in Yemen.) It was clear they both yearned to have the candidates in a witness stand and under oath, forced to answer the prosecution, without those pesky real-life audience members with questions. The entire format seemed to strike the moderators as a nuisance, one to be indulged as rarely as possible. To their credit, they were tough on both candidates, and Trump was whiny about it.

On substance, some interesting things were actually said, especially on foreign policy. Trump’s criticism of Clinton’s record of arming rebel groups against dictators and making problems worse was a substantive one, whether you agree with it or not. The same went for his statement that we share enough anti-ISIS interests with Russia, Iran, and Syria to collaborate with them in the Middle East. Clinton, for her part, spoke knowledgeably, as always, about healthcare. No minds were changed, but Trump held his own.

There was much to appall people, by the way. It wasn’t just Trump bringing up the dirty laundry of Bill Clinton. It was also Trump vowing to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Clinton and, if things went as expected, put her in jail. That’s really not something that’s best to say. As for outreach to wavering voters, Trump did not exactly put his hand out far. To a Muslim who asked about Islamophobia, Trump talked about the threat of terrorism. To an African American who asked about whether Trump could be a president for everyone, Trump bashed Clinton and said her economic policies were bad. But the night was still his more than Clinton’s.

The good news for Trump haters—or, more precisely, Clinton supporters—is that this probably made little difference. People watched this debate, but the one everyone had to see was last month’s, and that’s already gone. Clinton is on top in the polls, and there she is likely to stay. Trump probably arrested his plunge, or slowed it considerably, but most of those on the fence have already been scared away from Trump by the past fortnight—debate loss, late-night rants, leaked videotape, you name it

If Trump had done two weeks ago what he did tonight, he’d have kept his own momentum going. But he didn’t do that because he is who he is. Trump learns only from his own mistakes. And tonight we saw that he learned his lesson well, and too late.