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On Monday night, MTV debuted “The Hills: New Beginnings.”

It’s a revival of “The Hills,” a show that pioneered a specific style of unreal reality television and made pre-Instagram influencers out of a group of SoCal teenagers some of us had watched hone their dramatic chops on “Laguna Beach.”

For my colleague Brooks Barnes — as it certainly was for lots of viewers — “The Hills” was hate-watch catnip with a view. Here he is on the reboot:

“I’m excited to be reconnecting with this group of friends,” one woman on MTV’s sequel to “The Hills” said during the first episode on Monday night.

I wanted to believe her — an affirmation of my decision to tune in. But even she sounded skeptical. Her words came out as the verbal equivalent of a forced smile, the kind you give people at a high school reunion after realizing that you have nothing in common with them anymore.