To begin with, it sounds lick your are drag selecting. That's the only way it would ever slect 2 faces in one try. When you're trying to select one face, just click on that face. However, if you really want to drag select, and you don't want it to select back faces, in the attribute editor under Mesh Component Display, set backface culling to full.

As for the UV editor, yeah it's kind of weak. However, you shouldn't even be in face mode. You should be in UV mode. Then you'll be able to select the UVs you want to edit and still see all of the faces.