i made the comment a while ago that it's so good it has the power to surprise me with how offended it makes me. It's so well done i believe they believe that they say.
i didn't see the pregnancy coming. Interesting twist to say the least.

I watched the first few episodes, then missed a couple, and realized then that I didn't really care that I'd missed them. Why's it a standout for you, 'pode? Sell me!

Heh. I'm terrible at articulating why i like things. Three reasons I guess: writing, acting, costumes. It's incredibly layered. You can see 3 or 4 different aspects of the theme of an episode radiating out from just the episode title. Character motivations are consistent with what we know of their personalities, while still being subtle and sometimes unexpected. The writers value the entire cast - there are subplots with minor characters that don't feel forced, arbitrary, or stuck in to push the point of the main theme. All of the characters are complex, even (again) the minor ones. The actors sell this complexity, making it difficult to dislike even the bastards.

The outfits rock and I haven't worked out whether I want to be Joan or fuck her.

i missed the first couple episodes, but there was something about the one that happened to be on that made me do a double take and really start paying attention.
i like that it's a period piece that is so well done down to every detail, of what it was really like and not just what the pop memory and conventional idea of the time is, and how that aspect makes it possible to open issues that get usually get breezed over or mishandled while showing the morays of the time.
The candylike period coating with the real gritty chew of human behavior that has that layered flavor you find in good writing, that tastes of a kind of depth and honesty, bitter, rich and sweet, means there's lot of different things to enjoy on different levels.
For me.
Not that anyone asked.

Plus there a lot of people involved in it are from a bunch of different projects i've really liked, and i love the wardrobe and set design.

Also, the use of actual events and elements. Being set in 1960 in advertising is just chock full of possibilities.

I watch it. But what hasn't come up, in any story line, perhaps because it's too nuanced to be easily represented, is the degree to which executives of that time saw their secretaries as "work wives" as much as sex objects. There were some intimations of that, in Episode 3 "Marriage of Figaro," as Pete's wife stops by to meet him for lunch, and runs into the office crew, but in the main, that theme, which in my experience of early '70s American business, was a helluva lot more prevalent than the incidence of actual affairs between secretaries and executives, is just absent.

In my experience, secretaries, in many companies, had career paths that were connected, entirely, to the fortunes of the executives with whom they paired up early on. Their efforts were often important, if generally unremarked, contributors to the executives' actual success in the workplace, and more than once, I've been privy to discussions of whether this "girl," or that, would be "suitable" in a role as secretary to a position with greater "span," and social/public responsibilities. There was an expectation that a capable man was able to attract, and keep the most intelligent, capable staff, and that there was no better "one shot" distillation of this ability, than the woman who sat outside his office door, answered his phones, and kept his calendar.

More than once, I've known of women in secretarial jobs of that era, given 4 figure expense checks, and sent out for 3 or 4 day "make overs" when their boss got a promotion. When they got back, with a new Chanel suit or five, they were paired with "trainers" for a few days, or weeks, to teach them how to maintain corporate organization charts on software they'd never seen before, and how to operate new office machines, and how to book travel on corporate aircraft, and make reservations that would be honored at the best watering holes in tough towns. A "girl" that could reliably get a reservation for 8 at an exclusive Boston dining club, or find a 4 star hotel room for a visiting dignitary when a blizzard was blowing outside, was valued, but she was kept if she could do it, 5 days a week, in a Chanel suit, with a good accent, and understated makeup.

Don Draper's distant, closed, cold relationship with the passive aggressive Peggy, is so atypical of executive-and-secretary "teams" of near that time, that I've personally known (and I've known dozens, if not hundreds of such pairings), that it rings falsely, to me. To the point that I'd say, a guy like Draper would have been marked down, substantially, by a Roger Sterling or a Bertram Cooper, in that time, for having a Peggy "on" his calendar. Even on Madison Avenue, and even in a place where his brilliance as a creative was unquestioned, his capability of attracting and managing staff would have been judged, to a great degree, by his gatekeeper, Peggy.

But I suspect this kind of story line is a bit too historically accurate, for modern day audiences. To get an audience with today's sensibilities for a show like Mad Men, you have to find a Christina Hendricks, and pull the camera to her curves, and have characters like Roger Sterling be hotel room dogs, as a result.