Vested Id wrote:

Mad Men literally reverses that formula by portraying the 50s/60s realistically (disputable but certainly when compared with Pleasantville), and the bargain it's presenting is that when you look at that world as it actually was, with the flaws mixed in with the good things the postwar era was superior to the world we live in in almost every way. Whether that's true is another issue but it's the show's whole cultural import.