Well, if you override a node template, it's going to be applied to the browse (or sitemap) mode. I guess that's your problem.
What's the purpose of having a custom template for the node 2 ? A splash screen or something ?
The easiest to go around the problem is to create a new home page dummy node into the media folder for instance), set the override on that node and set ez to use that node for the home page.
IT actually has nothing to do with node 2.
I have a general pagelayout override that is affecting the XMLArea functioanality. I thought that pagelayout overrides in the side was completely seperate from the admin site override. Is there anyway around that?