https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11548334
To summarise, the issue Dave Thomas has with agile is that it has become a prescriptive framework, 'Agile' (with a capital 'A'), rather than what it originally started out to be, which is a means of being agile (small 'a').
I really liked this talk, and agree with both him and the OP of this thread that some parts of the 'Scrum' as a prescriptive framework may not work for you.
I find it a bit strange that the OP singled out the retrospective as being a negative- for me this is the best part about 'Scrum', as long as you're not too prescriptive about it.
Really the retrospective is a chance to improve yourselves as team each sprint, and it's a chance for people to get stuff off their chests. It shouldn't be just about scrum, it can be anything - adopting new approaches to development eg: TDD, discussing the state of the code, anything. That's what makes them (for me anyway and I think(!) my teams) enjoyable & useful meetings.