Quoted

 "A period transplant would change the historical details, pop-culture references, and mores, but not the characters, tone, or themes. Mad Men would still be Mad Men because the show isn’t about history. It’s about mystery — specifically the mystery of personality. Weiner practices sawdust-and-footlights dramaturgy. Scenes go on longer than TV’s norm and let significant action play out in wide shots that turn the edges of the screen into a proscenium. For all its snappy dialogue, the show’s most piercing moments are silent: Don, AWOL from his daughter’s birthday party, parked at a railroad crossing while a train rumbles past; ex-lovers Peggy and Pete regarding each other through a glass partition; Don and Peggy curled on Don’s office couch like shipwreck survivors on a raft."

- Matt Zoller Seitz "What Makes Mad Men Great" from Vulture

I agree with a lot of what he says, particularly about the show's true appeal being its function as a character study. However, I don't know that all the characters could translate as easily to other time periods as he claims. Namely, I think that a lot of what shapes Joan and Betty as characters is rooted in cultural expectations of women at the time and how they shape their lives around those expectations. (After recently watching "The Mountain King" again, I also think that this plays a part in why Anna decides to let Don get away with his identity fraud. But that's sort of a half-thought-out tangent.) They're both educated women who ultimately see their paths leading to the domestic sphere whether that best serves their personalities or talents or not, seemingly because it's what they're "supposed" to do. I'm not saying that this type of woman is exclusively tethered to the sixties, though The Feminine Mystique made her a sort of archetype of the era. I guess my question is what different experiences might result in a Joan or a Betty in, say, 1980?