Yeah, agreed. It'd be nice if a manager let their reports set the frequency of the 1:1s, or at least encouraged them to cancel or cut them short if they don't have much to discuss. (Obviously canceling to the point where you don't get to chat for months isn't great, but there's a happy medium somewhere.) But many of the managers I know seem to value the ritual (or perhaps the "look at me, I'm doing useful work!" aspect) of the 1:1 so much that it would reflect poorly on the employee at review time if they skipped even rarely.