Benjamin Schwarz writes in the Atlantic about Mad Men and "what's wrong—and what’s gloriously right—with AMC’s hit show".

I've watched every episode of Mad Men religiously and attentively, although at times it can be dreary, even boring.  In his critique/appreciation, I think Schwarz misreads a few things, like Betty Draper's character, but I've been annoyed by some of the same things Schwarz has noticed.  Like the occasional narrative neon signs that seem to scream: look at these benighted old-fashioned notions!

...that stance is responsible for the rare (and therefore especially grating) heavy-handed and patronizing touches in an otherwise nuanced drama... [a] stance evokes and encourages the condescension of posterity; just as insecure college students feel they must join the knowing hisses of the callow campus audience when a character in an old movie makes an un-PC comment, so Mad Men directs its audience to indulge in a most unlovely—because wholly unearned—smugness. As artistically mistaken as this stance is, it nonetheless helps account for the show’s success. We all like to congratulate ourselves, and as a group, Mad Men’s audience is probably particularly prone to the temptation.