Well. Things get even weirder. I can fairly consistently get the comfort access controls to work. Further, after fiddling with them enough to activate I can get the car to recognize a command or two from the remote before going dark again.

If I recall correctly when I pulled my door handle off before it disabled all the comfort access features by breaking the circuit but I think the remote buttons still worked. Can anyone confirm this behavior? I only had it off an afternoon while I was swapping them so my memory is fuzzy.

New hypothesis is another failed door handle. Maybe a failing CA antenna that’s not throwing a fault for some reason? I know from experience that the door handle won’t throw a fault so that’s my best bet.