Is the consensus that 2E had good settings but bad modules?
Yes. I believe that is the consensus.
At the tale end of 1e, in the late '80s - about 1986 or 1987, TSR completely changed their module style and format. While there were certainly exceptions on both sides of my dividing line, you could generally say that prior to the change, adventures were typically...
a. Generic - they weren't specifically tied to a campaign setting or were tied so loosely that they could be easily adaptable to pretty much any campaign world.
b. Self-contained - usually they were stand alone adventures, those part of a larger series could generally be played on their own just fine, and generally you did not need any products other than the core rules to run them.
c. Site-based - Focused much more on the geography of the area and the inhabitants therein than specific events that can occur to the party. In other words, once the preliminary set up was staged, what happens to the party was largely controlled by what area of the adventure the party traveled to and what they did once they got there.
d. Short - as short as 8 pages long, and rarely more than 32 pages long, saddle-stitched paper backs.
After 1986 or 1987, TSR's adventures became more tied to specific campaign settings, almost always parts of larger series and were frequently tied to non-core rules and sourcebooks, event-based rather than site-based (in other words, with a number of pre-set events that would occur to the party regardless of what actions the party took), and much longer - often 90+ page perfect bound books, with a number of boxed-set adventures.
Another big distinction between earlier adventures and later adventures is that there were far fewer of them produced, but were printed in much, much larger quantities. Adventures from the late '70s and early '80s were printed in the hundreds of thousands, while adventures from the later period usually had print runs under 10,000.
So from this you can probably tell why 1e adventures get mentioned far more often than 2e adventures. (And I'm using "1e" loosely, as the change in design really occurred just prior to 2e coming out.) There were far fewer 1e adventures to choose from but they were (and are - check ebay prices) more easily available, they generally weren't advertised as being part of a campaign you weren't playing, were more easily plugged into existing campaigns, more easily completed, and generally more utilitarian to a broader selection of D&D'ers.
