so, went and got a Dorman assembly, took out the old fan (which was considerably longer. Video does not talk about the 3rd bolt at the bottom).
before that though, i drove into the drive way, and one of the fans was running, and stayed on for about 5 seconds after shutting the car down (this is a cold start). the AC is still on max.
after replacing the fan with the new one, i ran the car, and the temp is slowly getting to mid, drove it around the block to get solidly mid temp, and pull back into the drive way. the fans are not on.
so, it seems like the fan assembly was probably still fine, I now need to figure out what triggers and sends signal to the FCM to start the fan.
edit. it's currently 76 here, and I let it idle in the drive way for over 15 minutes with the ac on full. the AC compressor kicked on off and on, but the radiator fan never triggered. the temperature, however, stayed at 1/2, which is now completely baffling me.