"Brawl Street": Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer

The “week-long feud of the century” kicked off The Daily Show’s March 12 episode with host Jon Stewart flexing his muscles and concluded with a conciliatory friendly handshake with CNBC’s Mad Money host James Cramer. But if this was a friendly make-good appearance intended to follow up on Stewart’s unusually lengthy (8 minutes) and vitriolic take-down of CNBC on March 4 and his follow-up show that focused on Cramer on March 10, there were plenty of hard punches by Stewart, leaving Cramer scrambling to explain himself and his network’s ways.

Before Stewart introduced Cramer, the comedian showed in a set-up piece how he supposedly trained for the interview. Sitting in a mock interrogation room with a bright light shining in his face, Stewart was peppered with questions: How many stocks are in the Dow Jones Industrial average? What is Tier 1 capital? Meanwhile, what was Cramer doing to prepare? He was shown as a guest on the Martha Stewart Show learning how to bake pies. “Don’t you destroy enough dough on your own show?” Stewart joked, after seeing Martha and Cramer slamming rolling pins into pastry dough while invoking Stewart’s name. “How weird is our world that Jim Cramer is on TV baking pie and Martha Stewart is the one who went to jail for securities fraud?” Stewart quipped.