@chiefgyk3d WELL -- I'm using wifi only for this computer, and I didn't know beforehand that I would run into this issue, so once I joined it to the wifi, even if I released the DHCP lease, it'd renew.
Ended up re-re-installing and doing the whole command line + "I have no internet" bit and that worked. But yeah... just crazy you can't bypass that in normal order anymore.