pending seems to be for displaying unconfirmed outgoing transactions. not incoming. get_transfers will display transactions with < 10 confs if pending is set to false.
monero-project/monero#8140 (comment)
i have not sanity checked this by sending get_transfer calls with various combinations to confirm (out:true with pending:true and false while watching what is displayed as the confirmations creep up)
confirmed pending:true / false has no effect on incoming tx's with N confirmations