Sadly, Season 1 Joe is just incohesive. Like, you want there to be some structural reason behind his madness and there just isn't any, because there's too much of crazy. Season 2 tries to walk much of that back.

I haven't yet seen season 3 and beyond, but it's clear the OP blogger agrees:

> The best thing the show’s writers ever did was realize that Joe wasn’t the most interesting character.

Like, Lee is a good actor for sure, he was just given a poorly story crafted role.

His character makes much more sense in later seasons.