To provide an example, Mad Men portrays a (historical) patriarchal setting, but is critical of it, demonstrating the difficulties women have and asking us to sympathize with them, which gives the show some feminist props.

BSG portrays a fictional setting that's still patriarchal (though dramatically less so than the early 1960s setting of Mad Men), but seems unaware of its patriarchalism, and the writers ask us to pretend that this lesser degree of patriarchy constitutes the absence of patriarchy.