Biggest Drop in Quality

[Monzo]

In the later years of Dallas, there was a feeling that the quality declined (further) with the start of each new season, but when do you think the biggest drop in quality occurred?

A note regarding the different ways of counting the seasons: The poll you can participate in is based on a total of 14 seasons.

 

[Seaviewer]

I voted season 14. As you say, there was a steady decline through the later seasons but at least there was some semblance of continuity. In the final season it was like "is this even the same show?"

 

[CeeCee72]

I voted for season 11. Season 10 was the last time Dallas actually felt like Dallas to me. Between the mummy fiasco, Kimberly Cryder, Nick, April, and Lisa, it was just awful.

Oh yeah, isn't season 11 when we got that dreadful Laurel storyline? Gross.

 

[Angela Channing]

Dallas's decline wasn't linear, it seemed to steadily go down and then plummet before another steady decline before the next plummet. A sort of staircase descent.

I think the first major drop was season 9 with the Marinos Shipping storyline and bringing back Bobby at the end. The next major drop was season 11, as @CeeCee72 correctly identifies the ghastly Laurel Ellis storyline as a new low.

However, season 14 was so dire, it's hard not to think that the fall from season 13 (quite ghastly) to season 14 (incredibly ghastly) not to be the biggest fall in quality.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

As mediocre as Season 9 was (too daytime soapy) nothing in Peter Dunne's Season 9 was as dire as much of Seasons 12, 13 and 14.

While the pace was off in Season 11, and it couldn't hold a candle to Season 10, I at least felt DALLAS was still DALLAS -- until Season 12.

 

[Willie Oleson]

A sort of staircase descent.

How very soapy of them.

Everything post-PamCrash looks like DALLAS Extra, almost like an Alternative Reality Dallas that we may or may not remember correctly, like a foggy cloak-and-dagger meeting in Vienna.
I don't trust any comments posted about those episodes, let alone the seasons as a whole.