These Reality TV Legends Are Back—And More Unhinged Than Ever

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images It can be an unsettling, unmooring experience: the surprise of seeing people you know from one context and place in a completely different arena.

It’s like seeing your teacher at the grocery store as a child, or your coworker on a dating app.

Wait, what are you doing here? Like a polar bear in a desert, it’s the destabilization of seeing something that doesn’t belong.

That should , in theory, be the experience of watching The Golden Life , the new E! channel reality series in which the veteran cast of The Real Housewives of New York City , women as much a part of the fabric of the Big Apple as yellow taxi cabs, sarcasm, and Gen Z transplants waiting in line for $15 frozen yogurt, are living and filming in Palm Beach.

These women? In Florida?? Moreover, on E! instead of Bravo??? The Golden Life , which a few friends have snarkily branded “ Real Housewives Does Golden Girls ,” finds former RHONY friends/frenemies decamping to Palm Beach to soak up the sun and this new stage of life now that their marriages are over, their children are grown, and their lives are unburdened.

Ramona Singer , 69; Sonja Morgan , 62; and Kelly Bensimon , 58, already lived there, at least part time.

Dorinda Medley , 61, and Luann de Lesseps , 61, who has a colorful history with Palm Beach—she was arrested there in 2017—traveled down for the reunion, five years after Bravo decided to stop filming with the original RHONY cast.

After watching the show and interviewing the rambunctious women—either they were extremely caffeinated, or I need to get in on that Florida lifestyle—it becomes clear that, for both the cast and the audiences who’ve missed them, living the golden years in the Sunshine State is a great fit.

“At one point, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’d ever really wear Lilly Pulitzer,” Medley says.

“Then I’m like at that store twice a week.

I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I love that print!’ I never wore so much pink, yellow, and lime green in my life.” What works about the series is how naturally the cast’s RHONY dynamic translates to Palm Beach, where Singer fancies herself a Queen Bee, and being untethered from New York obligations lets the lunacy really fly free.

The women are lighter, wiser, and have perfected their beauty-procedure regimens.

In many ways, they are also, refreshingly, exactly the same.

Wrangling the energies of Morgan and Singer remains, entertainingly, the reality-TV equivalent of herding cats.