The peak episode was when Mary went blind, which was the two parter I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away (season 4, 1978), but right after that we meet Albert and Mary starts teaching. It goes downhill very rapidly after that and Laura becomes a teacher they get married, etc. So really it stopped being worth watching right after Mary goes blind, but it lasted another 6 years! FYI this was based on the real journal of Laura Engels Wilder and most of it is true.
shareSeason 5, when the Ingalls brought Albert to Walnut Grove. I don't know what they were thinking. He was even worse than Nancy.
He burned down the blind school, killed Mary's son, killed his best friend's mother, and then hit him because of a girl. He lied, cheated, stole, took drugs, hit another kid, slapped a teacher. He also tried to kill Nellie and Harriet. What else?
Wow, I didn't watch the ones with Albert. Sounds like the best ones!
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To me the beginning of the end was when Landon cut the Edwards family out in the beginning of Season 4. I understand if they had to leave because of internal management conflicts but I can't believe they couldn't have found a better way to provide an exit story than the way they did. POOF! They've moved to California with no explanation and no episode to show them leaving and the Ingalls helping them pack--and we're suddenly supposed to hate John Jr.'s guts when he was previously written as a flawed but sympathetic and likeable character.
Season 4 is still a good solid season overall, but I agree with most of you that Season 5 was when things really started taking a nosedive in terms of the quality of screenwriting. Storylines were repeated (Author Author is a knockoff of Journey in the Spring and Mortal Misson is a knockoff for Plague and Quarantine) as a result of running out of new ideas and it got to the point where just about any silly thing was a plot--fairy godsister, werewolf, orangutans, feminist strike, prejudice against fat people, lake monster, college reunion in pioneer culture etc.)
The biggest thing that bothered me was the idea of two blind people marrying and taking care of a sighted child--and this was briefly mentioned as a concern in "The Wedding" episode. I'm sure we all would have loved to have seen an episode of how Mary and Adam would overcome this obstacle and find a way but Landon said "Nah! I'm too lazy to do that. I'll kill their child off so I don't have to come up with a well thought out storyline about that."
However, I wouldn't say it jumped the shark until "To See the Light" when Adam got his vision back from getting hit in the head (very unrealistic) and they started adding new kids to keep the show alive that weren't all that interesting--Nancy, Jenny, James, Cassandra.
By Season 8, it was time to pull the plug, for sure.