Before Aaron Paul was Jesse Pinkman, Walter White’s meth-making pupil in “Breaking Bad,” he was a regular on HBO’s “Big Love” — a drama about a polygamist sect, which explored abuse in the name of religion and the solace of an unorthodox faith.

Hulu’s “The Path,” whose first two episodes appear on that streaming service Wednesday, shares themes with the latter show; it takes place on the upstate New York compound of a fictional cult, the Meyerist Movement. Like the former show, it uses Paul’s gift for playing morally conflicted souls under pressure.

The combination has potential, but the execution, while offering glimpses into a fascinating subculture, is sluggish and unfocused. “The Path” is literally cult TV, but no cult classic.

Eddie Lane (Paul) has found a life and a family within Meyerism, a hierarchical organization — members climb a “Ladder” of 10 “rungs” — built on a pastiche of pseudoscience and South American shamanism. (Note to viewers and lawyers: It is not Scientology! The series even references Scientology as a separate organization, to make things clear.)

Eddie came to Meyerism after a troubled childhood, but his wife, Sarah (Michelle Monaghan), was born into it — she’s a kind of Meyerist royalty. (In their lingo, she ranks “8R” to his “6R.”) Their son, Hawk (Kyle Allen), is 15, almost old enough to take the Meyerist vows. It’s a comfortable life of vegetarian dinners, home birthing in pools and earnest talk about “unburdening.”

It will soon fall apart. On a spiritual retreat, Eddie has an epiphany that convinces him Meyerism is a fraud, even as the compound leader, Cal (Hugh Dancy of “Hannibal”), who claims to have the ear of the mysterious founder, Steven Meyer (Keir Dullea of “2001: A Space Odyssey”), hatches a plan to raise Meyerism’s public profile by questionable means. As Eddie hides his doubts (the Meyerists are not kind to apostates) and Sarah is drawn into Cal’s power struggle with the sect’s higher-ups, the three form a triangle that’s both emotional and spiritual.

The strong world-building by the show’s creator, Jessica Goldberg, gives the cult a thought-through history and jargon — even its own crunchy culture, including folk songs (“Up, up, up the Ladder / To the Garden in the sky!”) and children’s books.

But “The Path” is so careful not to make Meyerism reflect any particular belief system that the faith feels like a grab bag. So, ultimately, does the series. Sometimes it has the eerie tone of a supernatural thriller; sometimes it’s a low-key family ensemble piece; sometimes it’s a melodrama, particularly the underdeveloped story of Mary (Emma Greenwell), a brittle sexual-abuse survivor drawn to the cult and Cal. There’s also a legal subplot that never quite takes off, in which an FBI agent, Abe Gaines (Rockmond Dunbar), tries to infiltrate the group.

Often it’s pure camp, especially the hallucination and dream sequences the show overuses to explore character psychology. They may be explained by the cult’s ritual use of ayahuasca and “sacred herb,” but they seem like a goof if you’re not smoking whatever “The Path” is.

There’s a maddening vagueness to “The Path.” It’s fuzzy on whether Meyerism is an obscure sect or a global menace. Only sometimes do you get a sense of what the faith means to its adherents. From the opening scene, in which Meyerists aid survivors in the wreckage of a tornado that looks precisely like a TV set of a tornado’s wreckage, the show has a cool, stage-managed unreality.

In the series’s best parts, Goldberg engages a paradox: Meyerism may be an exploitative scam, but its members believe and want to do good with it, even the corrupt Cal. The dynamics of the Lane household — especially Hawk’s fumbling adolescent questioning — recall the family dramedies of the executive producer Jason Katims (“Parenthood,” “Friday Night Lights”).

In these moments, “The Path” echoes themes of “The Americans” (idealists in the service of a dubious cause) and “The Leftovers” (the vacuum created when faith is shaken). It’s anchored by strong lead performances; Dancy gives depth to what might have been a cardboard conniving villain. And toward the end of the season, as “The Path” dives into Eddie’s backstory, it gets the kind of grounding it could have used from the beginning.

But by that point, you may have already jumped off the Ladder.