To me, I think everyone took the processes WAY too literally which caused the whole big "A" Agile versus little "a" agile. I have seen many orgs get super wrapped up in all the typical nonsense of stories "falling over", religion about who owns the backlog which takes away autonomy of the team, religion about the process for breaking a sprint as new discoveries are made, arguing over product work versus addressing tech debt or working on automation, etc. You end up focusing more on "being agile" than delivering new features.
I 100% agree with the other comment around "checkin" points so that work doesn't linger forever, but the forced short delivery boundaries very likely slow teams down overall especially when all the process overhead of points, backlog grooming, standups, sprint planning, demo session, etc are all factored in and mandatory every 2 weeks.
Commit to some scope, on some cadence/date, loosely check in on progress, and adjust as needed as a team. Deliver as frequently as possible and demo your work when you can/should.