I think Gert, although is a compassionate person and calls herself a social justice warrior, she uses that a lot as armor. She does it to keep from being hurt and that's why she just wants to fallback and judge people (Chase in this instance) in these established categories. It is a way for someone to easily write-off what the person feels/thinks. She's hurt and would rather be angry than try to understand where Chase is coming from. This is a very natural thing for people to do. It's not right, but it does happen all the time. She's open-minded enough to, I think, get over those general categorizations given time. She does have emotional medical issues too that might exacerbate her reactions.
About Leslie, I'd wondered early on if the actress was pregnant because I've seen the actress mostly not pregnant (like in Timeless and other things) and her face looks SLIGHTLY fuller this season...among other parts of her. ;-) But, watching it again with you, I totally see that they were strategically filming her and never showing her waist. She was always shot from the chest up and they had her hiding behind different furniture and things in other shots and wearing very loose clothing. They did a pretty good job of hiding it, as you can attest since you were caught off-guard. xD