The second season was not as good as the first

Both seasons are 12 episodes, though, so what are you talking about?

I like both seasons kind of equally. The problem is that it's a trade-off in quality -- Season 1 has that amazingly beautiful, atmospheric, mysterious feel to it, but is also very slow-paced and even I have to admit that episodes 7-9 feel like treading water a bit. Then Season 2 corrects the pace issues (a bit too much) by speeding things way up, giving us a huge exposition-dump in the first episode, and generally making things more exciting and fast-moving; in the process, though, it kind of (though not entirely) loses that carefully cultivated thick atmosphere of dread and mystery which made Season 1 so enticing. S2 also seems to eschew the more naturalistic aesthetic of S1 for something increasingly frenetic, frantic, and baroque, with lots of wildly-color corrected dreams/visions of people with black eyeballs (such scenes in S1 were much less "fake"-looking). In other words, the horror element in S2 is more pronounced but also more gaudy and over-the-top. That episode with the mask-maker has just the right amount of everything, but elsewhere in the season a little restraint could've been used perhaps. So, like I said, it's a toss-up. I like both seasons equally for different reasons; Season 1 mostly for that thick atmosphere and for having some of the best epiodes, and Season 2 for the exciting propulsive pace where everything finally comes together, and a thrilling ending. Damn, I miss this show.