There’s nothing like having a good cry while watching a TV show, but any emotional TV viewer will tell you that sometimes those good cries can really ruin your day. You watch a weepy episode of TV right before you’re supposed to head out of the house — good luck to you and anyone else you might encounter for the next 30 minutes. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a heads-up before you embark on an episode of television that might make you bite into a pillow while stifling sobs? With Netflix’s latest limited-series weepfest From Scratch having just premiered, it seems like there’s no better time to provide this kind of service. Sharing is caring, after all.

From Scratch is based on Tembi Locke’s best-selling memoir, From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home, about the loss of her beloved husband, Sicilian chef Saro Gullo, who died of cancer in 2012. The TV adaptation follows Amy (Zoe Saldaña), a budding artist, and Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea), who dreams of being a chef, as they meet in Florence while Amy’s studying abroad, fall in love, build a life in Los Angeles, and face a devastating tragedy together. The premise alone points to someone sliding down the wall while sobbing (that someone is me), so it’s not like you don’t know what you’re signing up for when you turn this on. Yet still, not every episode is equally weepy. So here is an episode-by-episode guide about what to expect on the From Scratch journey, how deeply that episode might make you cry, and how many tissues you might want to have on hand as you watch so you can prepare accordingly. You’ve been warned.

Episode 1: “First Tastes”

From Scratch lures you in with gorgeous shots of Florence, hot people falling in love, and food montages that could make you both hungry and horny, depending on what you’re into. The first episode makes you feel safe and cozy with its rom-com structure: Amy, a law student from Texas taking time off to study art in Florence, and Lino, a Sicilian chef who ditched his duties on the family farm to pursue dreams of owning his own restaurant, have a meet-cute in which they literally bump into each other on the street. They have instant chemistry, but Amy tries to deny it by humping a hoity-toity art-gallery owner. Lino does swoony stuff like cook her delicious food and steal a bike for her (it’s cute?) and smells like garlic all the time.

Amy can’t deny her feelings any longer, but it might be too late! Finally, Lino waits for Amy in the rain and they have a big epic kiss in the rain, finally giving in to their feelings in the rain. From Scratch wants you to believe you’re just watching a lovely romance, but don’t be fooled, people, this is all a setup for the pain to come! If you think about it, tragic romances are just like horror movies only with less murder.

Will you cry during this episode? You might get misty-eyed either during the big, romantic finale or during the food montage at Lino’s restaurant when he serves Amy and her friends the perfect portion of spaghetti twirled around a fork and you realize you’ve been eating garbage food your entire life like a raccoon person. Half a tissue!

Episode 2: “Carne e Ossa”

After a year and a half of long-distance, Lino finally moves to L.A. to be with Amy. While she’s flourishing at her art-gallery job, Lino is miserable, sweating it out in the dank kitchen of a lowbrow “authentic” Italian joint. He does invent something I’m calling “traditional post-coital broccoli risotto” that should be a requirement of all boyfriends everywhere in perpetuity, and that’s not nothing.

After a disastrous Thanksgiving with Amy’s family, Lino’s a real sad boy. He doesn’t feel at home anywhere. Amy sets up a cute li’l playdate with some other Sicilians that lifts Lino’s spirits, and then Amy proposes to that boy in the parking lot of a bar. He says yes. Nothing can ruin this happy moment! Okay, actually, Lino calling his parents to tell them the news and his dad saying he’s a disgrace and that he has no son can ruin it.

Will you cry during this episode? If we’re talking emojis, this is less a 😭episode and more a 👀 because honestly, what the fuck, Lino’s dad?! No tissues, only sex risotto!

Episode 3: “A Villa. A Broom. A Cake.”

Oh God, this episode. Amy and Lino are getting married at a gorgeous villa in Florence, but you won’t see Lino’s family in attendance. His father Giacomo forbids Lino’s mother Filomena and sister Biagia from going and Lino is gutted. In a moving surprise, it ends up being Hershel, Amy’s initially very disapproving father, who helps Lino work through it and realize he does have a family who loves him. Filomena and Biagia do manage to sneak away and meet up with Lino and Amy on their honeymoon, but the damage has been done!!

Will you cry during this episode? I mean, Hershel gives Lino Texas-shaped cuff links and makes sure he isn’t alone before the wedding starts, SO YOU TELL ME. One tissue, it is a wedding episode after all.

Episode 4: “Bitter Almonds”

Buckle up, this is where things take a turn. Things are going pretty well for these newlyweds, there’s lots of talk about them really going after their dreams and following joy, and you just know it’s too good to last. And it is! Just as Lino is cooking his own food at a pop-up restaurant, he learns he has a rare type of cancer. He doesn’t want Amy to tell anyone, so not only do we get to watch these two grapple with Lino’s diagnosis, but we also have to watch as Amy buckles under the weight of keeping this secret and being isolated from her family. Eventually, Lino collapses, has to go to the hospital, and the cat’s out of the bag.

Will you cry during this episode? If you don’t have tears streaming down your face at the end of this episode when Amy’s mom Lynn and sister Zora envelop her at the hospital and have to physically hold her up, then you’ve got a real problem, pal. If you’re a normal human, probably three tissues! If you’re a robot, still one tissue! That’s how moving that scene is!

Episode 5: “Bread and Brine”

Not only are we dealing with Lino’s tumor surgery, but we’re also dealing with some deep-seated familial issues. You see, Lino’s parents come to L.A.! And let me tell you something about this tiny stubborn Italian man: He will break your heart. He can’t even walk in the house when they get there — he just starts fixing Lino’s garden! He can’t see his son, not because he’s a dick, but because he loves him so much! To see him in pain is too much for Giacomo to bear.

The surgery is a success, and eventually Lino and Giacomo have it out but in a cathartic way. And it ends with Giacomo referring to Lino as his son, which if you remember from above he refused to do for a very long time! He also gives Lino his jeff cap, and that seems like a big deal.

Will you cry during this episode? If you have any type of feelings about your dad, it might ruin your afternoon. Ten tissues, please. 

Episode 6: “Heirlooms”

This episode, I assume, is meant to be a bit of a reprieve between tragedies — a palate cleanser, for the foodies in the house — but if that’s the case, it fails miserably. Sure, it begins with Amy and Lino experiencing the joy of adopting their daughter Idalia, and they get seven or so cancer-free years in which they can just be a regular married couple with regular married couple problems. But just when you think you’re safe, the episode ends with Lino realizing his cancer is back. He takes Amy out for a date and they slow dance, holding each other close. Is it romantic as hell? Yes! Do we also know it’s a fucking dance of death?! Also yes! It is, as one might say, not cool. Eventually, Amy figures out that Lino’s sick and she gives him a look because now she knows and he gives her a look back because he knows she knows and it is just very rude, okay? Like, we can’t have one nice episode here??

Will you cry during this episode? They always seem to get you in the end, don’t they? Five tissues.

Episode 7: “Between the Fire and the Pan”

My initial summary for this episode was just going to be [sustained guttural moaning] because that’s what I did while watching it and that is what I’m doing now just thinking about it — but I’m nothing if not a professional, so I won’t leave you with just that.

This is it, folks. Lino’s cancer is back and Amy’s entire family rallies around the couple to get them through this, but it’s abundantly clear this is different from the first time. After a painfully frustrating experience with a bunch of doctors, they decide to put Lino on hospice and bring him home. His family and friends and the mail lady (?) spend one lovely day with him and he gets to hold his daughter and wife and then he dies. Does it romanticize death a little? Sure, but I signed up for a tragic romance, not an authentic look at end-of-life care, so I am fine with it!!

Will you cry during this episode? I said: Sustained! Guttural! Moaning! You will need every last tissue you can find and this episode will ruin your life. Enjoy, I think?

Episode 8: “Aftertastes”

Once you recover from episode seven, you will move on to episode eight, which starts off just as heart-wrenching — no, seriously, there’s a scene with Amy in the bathtub and her mother and stepmother trying to comfort her and Zoe Saldaña will rip your heart out. And you’ll let her!!

But the majority of the episode is about catharsis. Amy had promised Lino that she’d take his ashes back home to Sicily, and so she and Idalia make that trip. There’s some kooky culture-clash elements here, but mostly it’s about Amy and Lino’s mother, Filomena, healing together and about Amy realizing that Lino gave her a home and a family here, too.

Will you cry during this episode? I don’t know, does the thought of a hardened woman telling her daughter-in-law that her son and this woman were like “two forks eating off the same plate” make you want to cry? ME TOO. A half a box of tissues and a nice, long nap.

A Crier’s Guide to From Scratch